Patent Grants Per Fiscal Year (USPTO)

As expected, the USPTO has posted its first reduction in patent grants of the Kappos-Lee era.  In Fiscal Year 2015, the PTO issued 296k utility patents. That is a 3% drop from the record high of 304k patents issued in FY2014.  Although a modest reduction in the absolute number of patents granted, FY2015’s numbers still represent the second-highest number of patents granted in the PTO’s 200+ year history. FiscalYearPatentGrants

13 thoughts on “Patent Grants Per Fiscal Year (USPTO)

  1. 9

    I still think there has to be a time of “peak patent”, even if not this century. People will be unable to invent things ever faster, so the number of patents will have to level off into a plateau or drop.

  2. 8

    Since you were able to find the number of grants for FY2015, I imagine you can find the number of filings as well….I just can’t seem to find them myself. Would you happen to know this figure? Thanks!

  3. 6

    Is there a correlation of this graph with number of applications filed 3 or 4 years previous (or what ever the average pendency period is)?

  4. 5

    This looks much like an increase in the invention rates in both biotech and high tech. As technology advances in great leaps, whole new areas of technology and combinations thereof make fertile ground for invention.

    If this span of years – the dawn of advanced biotech and the computer/information age – shows such a trend, I would hypothesize the same increase in invention and patent grant would have accompanied the industrial revolution…

    Any data on western civilization grant rates around the time of the industrial revolution?

  5. 4

    Dennis — might be interesting to know the number of claims issued per year; and how those correlate to the number of issued patents.

    Did ’15 also see a drop in claims?

    1. 2.1

      LOL. You’re right that it can’t be used to calculate a grant rate, without knowing how many applications were filed. I don’t think that makes the data “useless.”

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