Patent Count

Between 1976 and 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted 9.36M patents. This half-century of data encompasses the personal computer revolution, the expansion of biotechnology, the rise of the internet economy, and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a general-purpose technology.

Annual patent grants averaged 66,000 per year (1976–1979), rising to 374,000 by 2024. Utility patentsA patent granted for a new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. The most common patent type, representing over 90% of US grants. — which protect novel inventions and processes — constitute over 90% of all grants. Design patents, which cover ornamental appearance, have also exhibited sustained growth.

This expansion has not been monotonic. Broader economic cycles are reflected in patent output, with utility grants declining in 2005 and again in 2007, and patent office backlogs have introduced year-to-year volatility. Nevertheless, the long-term trajectory indicates that an increasing number of individuals and organizations are seeking patent protection as intellectual property assumes greater strategic importance.

The growing volume of patent applications has placed sustained pressure on the examination process. Grant lagThe time (in days) between a patent application filing date and the date the patent is granted. Also called patent pendency. — the elapsed time between patent application and issuance — offers a direct measure of how well the patent office has kept pace with demand.

During the late 2000s, growing examination backlogs pushed average pendency near four years, peaking at 3.8 years in 2010. Since then, the USPTO has reduced average pendency to 2.66 years by 2023, a period that coincided with examiner hiring increases and process reforms; however, the increasing technical complexity of applications and sustained filing volumes continue to strain the examination system.

Counting patents by filing year versus grant year yields fundamentally different pictures of innovative activity. Filing-year counts capture when applications entered the system, while grant-year counts reflect when the USPTO completed examination. The gap between these two series reveals the lag and backlog dynamics inherent in the patent system.

Beyond the overall volume and pendency of patents, the structure of patent filings has changed substantially. The rise of continuation applications, divisionals, and continuation-in-part (CIP) filings reflects a strategic shift in how applicants use the patent system — not merely to protect individual inventions, but to build layered portfolios of related claims.

Having examined the overall scale of US patent activity and the examination timelines that shape it, the next chapter explores patent quality and complexity — including claim complexity, citation patterns, and technological scope.