USPTO patent records provide industry, technology areas, and geographical inventor information for all patents registered in the United States, including patents granted to individuals and foreign entities. Most patent topics in this report cover only inventions protected by utility patents. Design patents are included in this report in the coverage of patenting by gender; plant patents were last covered in Science and Engineering Indicators 2020 (see Indicators 2020 report “Invention, Knowledge Transfer, and Innovation”). More information on the patent data used in this report is available in the Technical Appendix provided with this report, and detailed methodological information is provided in Science-Metrix (2024).

The USPTO awarded 325,000 utility patents in 2022, of which 152,000 (47%) were assigned to domestic owners (Table SINV-1). Obtaining and defending a patent incurs significant costs; among U.S. assignees (the U.S. entities to whom inventors assign the rights of ownership), private owners—which are primarily businesses—receive by far the most patents (86%), while individual filers and those in academia and government account for much smaller shares (Figure INV-1). In the wake of the global pandemic, the total number of USPTO utility patents awarded annually to U.S. owners has declined since 2019, when 179,000 were granted. Patents assigned to U.S. businesses declined 15% between 2019 and 2022, in contrast to a general upward trend from 2000 to 2019 (Table SINV-1).

As commercial activities increasingly cross international borders, rising rates of foreign patenting reflect the desire of foreign firms to seek patent protection in multiple international jurisdictions (Fink, Khan, and Zhou 2015). Foreign owners were assigned rights to 53% of USPTO utility patents in 2022, an increase from 44% in 2000 (Table SINV-1). In contrast with ownership information, the addresses of inventors provide information about where inventors reside. The European Union (EU-27) and Japan continue to account for the largest numbers of foreign inventors (Figure INV-2). In 2020, the number of patents granted to inventors from China exceeded the number of patents granted to inventors from South Korea for the first time ever. Inventors with addresses in China received about 28,000 patents in 2022 (Figure INV-2). According to a USPTO report, the growth in USPTO patents granted to China is driven by nonmarket factors as well as by traditional market factors. The report identifies nonmarket factors such as university and government subsidies for patenting that can exceed the cost of filing the patent. These subsidies are often higher for patents granted in foreign jurisdictions (USPTO 2021).

USPTO utility patents granted in semiconductors make up 5% of total 2022 patents. Inventors who were resident in the United States received the largest number of USPTO patents in semiconductors, which is identified as a critical or emerging category (NSTC 2022) (Figure INV-3). In addition to inventors from the United States, the highest numbers of USPTO utility patents in semiconductors were issued to inventors from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and China. Semiconductor utility patents make up more than a quarter of the USPTO patents received by inventors from Taiwan (Figure INV-3). A public-use file contains data on USPTO patents granted by five broad technology areas and tabulated in Table SINV-4 through Table SINV-9 (File USPTO patents, by county and technical field).

As presented above, these data provide rich geographic and technological detail; however, patent data represent just a portion of all the ways that economically valuable ideas and inventions are protected by their owners. Nondisclosure agreements, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights are used by U.S. businesses in addition to utility and design patents (Shackelford and Kindlon 2021).

Invention is a market-driven activity and tends to take place where skilled human capital and other inputs are relatively abundant. As new knowledge spreads, it produces localized growth benefits or spillovers that drive additional growth (Grossman and Helpman 1991). States that have relatively high proportions of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are located primarily on the East Coast and West Coast of the United States and in the U.S. Midwest (see Indicators 2022 report “The STEM Labor Force of Today: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers”). As skilled labor and other inputs accumulate, a location’s initial advantages grow over time relative to other locations, leading to different growth rates and economic outcomes. Because patent documents include the addresses of both the inventor and the patent owner, patent data provide an indicator of the location of inventive activity.

County-level patenting intensity is measured in this thematic report by the location of the inventor of utility patents granted per 1,000 population. Counties with high patenting intensity are concentrated in the United States along the coasts and in parts of the Great Lakes region, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains (Figure INV-4). This geographic distribution corresponds to indicators of knowledge- and technology-intensive (KTI) industries, in which California is the single largest producer of KTI industry output, followed by Texas, Washington, and New York (see Indicators 2022 report “Production and Trade of Knowledge- and Technology-Intensive Industries”). In 2022, Santa Clara County in California’s Silicon Valley region had the highest patenting intensity. Three of the country’s top five counties in patenting intensity were in the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area. The top three counties in 2022 for patenting intensity are Santa Clara in California, followed by Fairfax City in Virginia and San Mateo County in California (Figure INV-4).