Era in Patents

The 1980s

The personal computer crossed into the home, the cellular phone shrank from a suitcase to a brick, and recombinant DNA matured into a commercial industry. Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft staked out interface and font patents that still govern modern software. The Walkman, the laser printer, and the first MRI scanners taught a generation that hardware could be personal.

By year

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

Top patents · 13 ranked by influence

1980 — 1989

US 4683195 · 1987 · Cetus Corp

How to Make Many Copies of a Specific DNA Segment

US 4723129 · 1988 · Canon Inc

Inkjet Printing — How a Hot Wire Discovered the Bubble Jet

US 4405829 · 1983 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How RSA Public-Key Encryption Secures Digital Messages

US 4200770 · 1980 · Leland Stanford Junior University

The Math That Makes Every HTTPS Connection Secure

US 4736866 · 1988 · Harvard University

OncoMouse — The First Patented Animal, Built to Get Cancer

US 4558302 · 1985 · Sperry Corp

How Computers Shrink Data by Finding Repeated Patterns

US 4237224 · 1980 · Leland Stanford Junior University

How to Make Hybrid DNA and Grow It in Microbes

US 4558176 · 1985

Computer systems to inhibit unauthorized copying, unauthorized usage, and automated cracking of protected software

US 4660166 · 1987 · California Institute of Technology

Electronic network for collective decision based on large number of connections between signals

US 4302518 · 1981

The Battery Cathode That Powers Every Electric Vehicle and Smartphone

US 4677614 · 1987 · Process Systems Inc

Data communication system and method and communication controller and method therefor, having a data/clock synchronizer and method

US 4531203 · 1985 · Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co Ltd

NAND Flash — The Memory in Every SSD, iPhone, and USB Drive

US 4302536 · 1981

Colorimetric immunoassay process

← The 1970s All decades →The 1990s →