On this day in 1870, the Averill Chemical Paint Company of NYC registered a “trade-mark for liquid paint.” It was the first official trademark in U.S. history and was filed under an act passed earlier that year which was eventually declared unconstitutional but the Lanham Act of 1946 established the current system of trademark protection.

Averill Chemical Paint company’s registration is still in use today but its trademark design has changed significantly over the years.  The oldest U.S. trademark still in use, SAMSON with the design of a man and a lion, registered on May 27, 1884. Samson Rope Technologies, Inc. uses the mark  on cords, line, and rope.

One of the most-recognized trademarks in the world is that of Coca-Cola. The company filed its first federal trademark application for the words COCA-COLA in its now-famous script on May 14, 1892, and it matured into a registration on Jan. 31, 1893. It took more than eight months for the application to mature into registration.  Today, it can take a year or more for a trademark to be registered.