Irving firm Bioworld wins patent for Santa hat sippy cup

Bioworld Merchandising in Irving received a patent for a novelty cup shaped like a Santa Claus hat. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the design patent during the week of Oct. 6. Jordan Jones of Austin is the sole listed inventor on the document.

The patent application was filed on Aug. 30, 2023. It took 1,133 days for the office to approve the design. The resulting product features an enclosed top and a straw, described in the filing as a Santa hat sipper.

Bioworld is not a new name in the region. The company started in 2000 as a headwear business. It has since grown into a global consumer products firm. The company develops its own items and partners with major entertainment properties. Earlier this month, its Heroes & Villains brand worked with Marvel to promote clothing and accessories for the film Avengers: Doomsday. Bioworld also built a themed booth for New York Comic Con based on Doctor Doom's fictional homeland.

In December 2025, Bioworld launched a corporate venture fund called Bioworld Ventures. The fund provides capital and operational help to early-stage consumer brands. This new patent aligns with that push into product innovation.

North Texas ranked ninth among 250 U.S. metropolitan areas for patent activity that week. A total of 135 patents had ties to the region. Eighteen of those had both a local inventor and a local assignee. Another 82 had only local inventors, and 35 were assigned to local entities. Texas Instruments in Dallas led the count with 15 patents. Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America in Plano came in second with six.

Other local connections included Civilized Power in Dallas, which received a patent for a hydrogen generation apparatus for vehicles. That application took 1,561 days to approve. Firehawk Aerospace in Addison, now Firehawk Defense, received a patent for hybrid rocket engine fuel grains. The sole inventor was co-founder Ronald D. Jones of Denton. The award came weeks before the company closed its Series D funding round.

Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, received a patent for a data center cooling system. Pardeep Shahi of Arlington was one of four inventors on that filing. Verily Health in Dallas secured three patents, including one for a virtual reality headset that performs color vision tests. Zoom Communications also won a patent for integrated network testing, with Dallas resident Russell Charles Hearn listed as a co-inventor. Patent Index provided the data for these counts.