Modern Use - Dandelion (Hongkong) Industry Co., Limited.

About Umbrella

Modern Use

In 1969, Bradford E. Phillips, the owner of Totes Incorporated of Loveland, Ohio obtained a patent for the first "working folding umbrella".^[16]

In 2007, Duane Cahill of Deer Lake, Pennsylvania obtained a patent for the first "LED-lit umbrella".^[17]

Umbrellas are now a consumer product with a large global market. As of 2008, most umbrellas worldwide are made in China, mostly in the Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. The city of Shangyu alone had more than a thousand umbrella factories.^[18] In the U.S. alone, about 33 million umbrellas, worth $348 million, are sold each year.^[18]

Umbrellas continue to be actively developed. In the U.S., so many umbrella-related patents are being filed that the U.S. Patent Office employs four full-time examiners to assess them. As of 2008, the office registered three thousand active patents on umbrella-related inventions.^[18] Nonetheless, Totes, the largest American umbrella producer, has stopped accepting unsolicited proposals. Its director of umbrella development was reported as saying that while umbrellas are so ordinary that everyone thinks about them, "it's difficult to come up with an umbrella idea that hasn't already been done."^[18]

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