Key takeaways:

• U.S. patenting and trademark activities are concentrated in certain areas of the country, with the highest rates on the East Coast and West Coast, around the Great Lakes, and in parts of the Southwest.
• Internationally, China and the United States are granted the highest numbers of artificial intelligence (AI) utility patents, with China’s AI patents primarily granted in machine learning.
• Consistent with the overall increase of international collaboration in peer-reviewed literature, the largest increase in collaboration for U.S. business-authored publications is with international authors.
• Among patents on technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation issued by the Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), those for climate change mitigation in energy generation, transmission, and distribution account for the highest number granted to inventors in each of the five most active countries or regions.
• About 190,000 USPTO utility patents were granted in 2022 in technology areas that correspond to CHIPS and Science Act technologies, almost half of which were granted to U.S. inventors.
• As an indicator of knowledge flow, biological and biomedical sciences publications and health sciences publications are by far the most cited by patent documents.
• The number of university licenses and license options granted to private sector entities has increased 50% in the last decade.
• Peer-reviewed publications from authors at the Department of Health and Human Services received more citations in patent documents than any other federal agency over the period from 2013 to 2022.
• At the federal agency level, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) report the highest numbers of invention disclosures in each year from 2011 through 2020, an indicator of invention prior to patenting.
• In 2009, only DOE, the Department of Commerce, and NASA used open-source platforms to share software with other users; by 2023, 26 federal departments and agencies did so.
• Venture capital investment dropped globally in 2022 after reaching record levels in 2021.
• The incidence of product innovation in the United States decreased between 2017 and 2020, driven by decreases in smaller companies with service sector innovation.