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
The Untouchables (1959 TV series) be bribed or intimidated by the Mob. Eliot Ness himself had died suddenly in May 1957, shortly before his memoir and the subsequent TV adaptation were to bring him fame beyond any he experienced in his lifetime. The pilot for the series was a two-part episode entitled "The Untouchables" originally aired on CBS's "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse" on April 20 and 27, 1959. Later retitled "The Scarface Mob", these episodes, which featured Neville Brand as Al Capone, were the only episodes in the series to be more-or-less directly based on Ness's memoir, and ended with the conviction and imprisonment of Capone.