Legal Research

U.S. Patent Counts, Q2 2008

The USPTO published 77,691 patent applications (A docs) in Q2, a six percent increase over the same quarter last year and the second straight quarter over 77,000, but a slight decline from the Q1 2008. The USPTO is on track to publish over 310,000 applications this year. Approximately 1.8 million plant and utilty patent applications have been published since 2001.

The number of issued patents (B docs) rebounded from 43,657 in Q1 to 49,353 in Q2, a dramatic 13 percent jump and a six percent increase over the previous year. Curiously, the number of issued patents remained flat for most of Q2.

Table 1. Quaterly Patent and PGPub Counts*

Qn ..... Patents .....PGPubs ..... Total
Q1 ..... 43,657 ..... 77,962 ..... 121,619
Q1 ..... 49,353 ..... 77,691 ..... 127,044

*Based on preliminary weekly data from the USPTO website. Totals may change after the fact due to withdrawn patents and published applications.

Table 2. Weekly Averages and Medians (Q2)

Patents ..... 3,796 ..... 3,841
PGPubs ..... 5,976 ..... 6,231

Table 3. Number Ranges for 2008 (Totals)

Patents ..... 7,313,829 - 7,392,547 (78,309)
Reissues ..... RE39,964 - RE40,405 (441)
PGPubs ..... 2008/0000001 - 2008/0155725 (155,725)
Designs ..... D558,426 - D571,975 (13,530)
Plants ..... PP18,373 - PP18,990 (618)
SIRs ..... H2,208 - H2,218 (11)

Full post as published by The Patent Librarian's Notebook on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).