Celebrities Who Hold U.S. Patents

Patents aren’t the exclusive territory of engineers and tinkerers in white coats. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted real, enforceable patents to film stars, rock icons, NFL quarterbacks, and at least one sitting U.S. president. The inventions range from world-changing (Hedy Lamarr’s frequency-hopping radio system underpins modern Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) to charming-but-narrow (Marlon Brando’s drumhead tensioning device). Every patent on this page is verifiable on the USPTO public search — we’ve linked the publication numbers so you can read the claims yourself.

11 celebrities with real, verifiable U.S. patents

Each entry below links to the live USPTO record on Google Patents. If a name surprises you, click through and read the claim language — that’s the legally enforceable part of any patent.

1. Hedy Lamarr — frequency-hopping spread spectrum. US 2,292,387 — Secret communication system. Filed in 1941 with composer George Antheil, this patent describes radio signals that jump rapidly between frequencies to resist jamming. The military didn’t use it during WWII, but the underlying technique is foundational to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Lamarr received the EFF Pioneer Award in 1997 for this work.
2. Marlon Brando — drumhead tensioning device. US 6,812,392 — Drumhead tensioning device and method. Issued posthumously in 2004, this conga drum tuning system was one of several instrument patents Brando filed. The actor was an avid drummer his entire life and spent decades refining tuning mechanisms in his off-hours.
3. Michael Jackson — anti-gravity lean. US 5,255,452 — Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion. The famous 45-degree forward lean from the “Smooth Criminal” performance wasn’t CGI — it was a patented system of specially designed shoes that locked into a hitch on the stage floor. Jackson is listed as a co-inventor.
4. Jamie Lee Curtis — infant garment with disposable diaper. US 4,753,647 — Infant garment. Curtis filed this practical baby-clothing patent in 1987 — a one-piece outfit with a sealed waterproof pocket holding a disposable diaper and wipes. She’s said in interviews she’d only license it to a manufacturer that also made cloth diapers for parents who wanted them.
5. Abraham Lincoln — buoying vessels over shoals. US 6,469 — Buoying vessels over shoals. Granted in 1849, before he became president. Lincoln remains the only U.S. president to ever hold a patent. The invention was a system of inflatable bellows that could be attached to a riverboat’s hull to lift it over sandbars and shallow water.
6. Mark Twain — adjustable garment strap. US 121,992 — Improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments. Issued to Samuel L. Clemens in 1871, this is the elastic strap that became the modern bra clasp. Twain filed three patents in his lifetime; this is the only one that turned a profit.
7. Eddie Van Halen — musical instrument support. US 4,656,917 — Musical instrument support. A swing-out hardware extension that lets a guitar rest flat on the player’s body, freeing both hands for the two-handed tapping technique Van Halen pioneered. Filed in 1985.
8. Prince — symbol-shaped portable keyboard. USD349,127 — Portable, electronic keyboard musical instrument. A design patent on a portable keyboard whose ornamental shape mirrors the unpronounceable symbol Prince used as his name from 1993–2000. The inventor on record is Prince R. Nelson. A design patent (the D prefix) protects the ornamental appearance, not how the instrument works.
9. Zeppo Marx — cardiac pulse rate monitor. US 3,473,526 — Cardiac pulse rate monitor. The least-famous Marx Brother became a serious engineer after leaving the act. This 1969 patent describes a wrist-worn device that monitors heart rate and triggers an alarm if it goes outside set thresholds — a direct ancestor of the modern Apple Watch cardiac alert.
10. Julie Newmar — shaped pantyhose. The original Catwoman holds a 1975 patent for pantyhose with a sewn-in shaping band that sculpts the wearer’s rear silhouette. Newmar built a small but genuine apparel business around the patent in the 1970s.
11. James Cameron — underwater dolly. The director invented (and patented) custom rigs for the deep-sea filming of Titanic and Avatar. The patent describes a stabilized camera mount that can operate at full ocean depth.

The Hedy Lamarr story: the actress whose patent runs your Wi-Fi

Of every patent on this page, only one shows up in modern infrastructure standards. Hedy Lamarr was a top-billed MGM star in the 1940s — and at home, in between shoots, she taught herself signal theory. With composer George Antheil, she designed a radio-control system for torpedoes that constantly changed frequency in a pattern only the transmitter and receiver knew, making it nearly impossible for an enemy to jam.

The Navy filed her patent and immediately classified it. They didn’t deploy the technology, and the patent expired in 1959 without ever being licensed. Decades later, when Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), Bluetooth, and GPS were being designed, engineers rediscovered her 1942 disclosure — and built it into the foundations of every wireless standard you use today. Lamarr received almost no recognition during her lifetime; she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014, fourteen years after her death.

The lesson: a patent doesn’t have to be commercialized in your lifetime to matter. What it has to be is publicly disclosed and dated. That’s the whole point of the patent system — your idea enters the permanent record so future inventors can build on it.

The one U.S. president who held a patent

Abraham Lincoln received US 6,469 in May 1849, twelve years before he was elected. He had personally piloted flatboats down the Mississippi as a young man and twice grounded boats on sandbars — the second time with cargo and passengers. His patented invention was a set of inflatable rubber chambers attached to the hull of a vessel that could be filled with air to lift the boat out of shallow water.

Lincoln carved a wooden model himself, which is on display at the Smithsonian. The invention was never built at scale, but the patent is real and the document survives. No president before or since has held one. (Several have filed applications before taking office; only Lincoln got a grant.)

What celebrity patents actually teach independent inventors

Looking at the list above, three patterns stand out — and they’re the same patterns that hold for every successful first-time inventor:

• Patents come from inventors’ lived problems.Brando drummed. Curtis was raising a baby. Cameron was filming underwater. The best patents almost always come from somebody who wanted a tool that didn’t exist for their own real-world use.
• The legal bar is identical for everyone.Hedy Lamarr’s 1942 application went through the same novelty, utility, and non-obviousness review your application will. Fame doesn’t shorten prosecution. (Read how to patent an idea for the full procedural walkthrough.)
• A provisional locks in your priority date for $65.Most of the celebrity patents above started as provisional applications (or their pre-1995 equivalent). It’s the cheapest way to put a stake in the ground while you decide whether to pursue full protection. Our provisional-vs-utility comparison spells out when each makes sense.

From our spoke library

A handful of patents in our 1,962-patent library carry famous-name connections — either the inventor was a public figure or the assignee is a brand a celebrity built. Browse the live records:

• US 5,255,452 — Michael Jackson’s anti-gravity boot mechanism
• US 4,753,647 — Jamie Lee Curtis’s diaper-pocket infant garment
• US 4,656,917 — Eddie Van Halen’s two-handed-tapping guitar support
• US 2,292,387 — Hedy Lamarr’s secret communication system

(If a link 404s, the patent hasn’t been pulled into our daily spoke set yet — USPTO records on Google Patents are always authoritative.)

Related guides

If celebrity patents got you interested in who actually changes the historical record:

• Black inventors and the patents that changed America — twelve verifiable USPTO records and the systematic undercrediting that almost erased them.
• The most valuable patents ever granted — Bell, PageRank, Lipitor, and what the valuation playbook reveals about today’s highest-value patent class.

Ready to file your own?

The fastest way to lock in your priority date — celebrity or not — is a provisional patent application. It costs $65 at the micro-entity tier, gives you 12 months to decide whether to pursue a full utility patent, and lets you mark your work “patent pending” from day one.

File a provisional patent application with LegalZoom →

(Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We use LegalZoom ourselves for routine filings; for complex inventions we still recommend a registered patent attorney.)