Patent pending an offense, which permits theoretical damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars for high-volume consumer goods. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act revised section 292 to say that only the United States may sue for that penalty but that a person who has suffered a competitive injury may sue for recovery of damages adequate to compensate for the injury. A provisional application, like any other patent application, also allows the applicant to use the term "patent pending". Numerous characters have assumed the name Pat Pending since at least the 1960s, notably Professor Pat Pending of cartoon series Wacky Races; the
Pat Pending Pat Pending Pat Pending is a fifty-foot trunk-cabin motor yacht that was designed by Ted Geary, and was built in 1929 by Lake Union Dry Docks in Seattle, Washington. The boat was originally owned by Lloyd Bacon, a film director made famous for films such as "Moby Dick" and "42nd Street". "Pat Pending" was then purchased in 1940 by a San Francisco Bay Area patent attorney named Don Owen, who planned to use the boat for recreational purposes. However, once World War II broke out in the Pacific theater, she was drafted by the U.S. Navy as a submarine net