From KERA:
What do a medicinal face mask, a vehicle parking system and a pet toy squirrel have in common? They were all created and recently patented by inventors in north Texas. Every year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office receives hundreds of thousands of applications; so many, it’s hard to keep up.
A growing backlog of applications is part of the reason the agency opened a satellite office — one of only a handful in the country — in Dallas two years ago. The office has done much more than chip away at a backlog of inventions. Some entrepreneurs took advantage of the resource, and benefited financially.