Key Takeaways

  • There are over 16 million active patent families worldwide, with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe leading global filings.
  • The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued more than 12 million patents since its founding, including over 400,000 new patents annually in recent years.
  • In 2025, IBM, Samsung, and Canon remain among the top patent holders, each securing thousands of new patents yearly.
  • Technological innovation—particularly in AI, telecommunications, and biotechnology—continues to drive record patent activity across industries.
  • Patent growth raises challenges, including overlapping claims, portfolio management, and legal complexity.
  • Understanding patent trends helps inventors, companies, and policymakers navigate the expanding intellectual property landscape effectively.

Intellectual Property Statistics

To determine the number of patents granted each year, it's important to learn a little bit about intellectual property statistics. With intellectual property statistics, you can learn about a variety of worldwide trends related to business, policy, and technology.

There is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization known as the National Academy of Inventors that comprises over 4,000 individual members in the United States. This organization also includes fellows in 250 institutions, as well as research institutes and universities across the world. Founded in 2010, the purpose of the National Academy of Inventors is to support inventors who have been granted patents from the USPTO, to foster young inventors, and to encourage the sharing of intellectual property.

A trade association known as the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) was founded in 1972 and deals with issues related to copyrights, patents, and trademarks. In the U.S., the IPO is the only entity that is focused on serving all intellectual property owners, regardless of their field or industry. There are a variety of services members of the IPO can access. In addition, this organization fights to make IP ownership rights affordable and effective.

Global Patent Landscape and Growth Trends

To understand how many patents are there worldwide, it’s helpful to look at data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). As of recent estimates, there are over 16 million active patent families worldwide. A patent family refers to a group of patents filed in multiple countries to protect the same invention.

Global patent filings have surged dramatically over the past two decades. In 2023 alone, inventors filed more than 3.5 million patent applications globally. The top five jurisdictions—China, the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the European Patent Office—account for nearly 85% of all patent filings.

China leads with more than 1.6 million filings annually, followed by the United States with approximately 400,000 new applications. Japan and South Korea maintain strong positions, while Europe continues to grow in life sciences and green technologies.

Key drivers of this global growth include:

  • Advances in AI, quantum computing, and renewable energy.
  • Government innovation initiatives encouraging domestic patent activity.
  • Corporate competition across industries such as semiconductors, automotive, and pharmaceuticals.

This expansion demonstrates the increasingly strategic role of intellectual property in the global economy.

Too Many Patents

Since the Federal Circuit was established, the rate at which patents are granted has increased annually by 5.7 percent. This is nearly triple the annual rate of 1 percent recorded between 1930 and 1982.

The size and number of IT portfolios has also grown. In 2002, Texas instruments, a company that applies for and receives a large number of patents, stated that finding out what was in their portfolio would be a nearly impossible task. As of 2002, their portfolio contained 8,000 patents. In 2011, that number had almost doubled.

If a large company with almost unlimited resources such as Texas Instruments can't manage their portfolio, it stands to reason that small companies would not be able to determine who owns what patent. 

While identifying who owns a patent is a tremendous problem, it can also be very difficult to determine what a patent covers and where the patent is valid. However, if you can withstand the expense, it may be possible to find prior art that makes an existing patent invalid. Because most patent rights aren't asserted, it doesn't make sense for small companies to perform the research necessary to avoid all valid patents.

It is estimated that there are over 250,000 active patents related to smartphones, and if each patent results in 20 claims, it means there are 5,000,000 restrictions you would need to avoid when developing a smartphone-related innovation.

There has been research that indicates comparing all of the products made by a software company to all software patents would require 2,000,000 lawyers working full-time. Even if this were possible, the lawyers' research would not be complete because they would not be able to discover patent applications that had not yet been published.

The sheer number of patents and patent applications puts producing companies in a very difficult situation.

While searching all available patents is expensive and ineffective, infringing on a patent can result in consequences such as:

  • Costly damages.
  • Injunctions against your business.
  • Prohibitions against importation.

Large companies do not want to be targets for lawsuits, making it important to have an experienced legal team that can prevent patent infringement.

One of the ways that software producers deal with the large number of patents is by cross-licensing their portfolios with other companies. Some companies sign non-assertion agreements, which is a promise that the companies involved in the agreement will not sue each other for patent infringement.

Many software producers resist the temptation to assert their patents out of a fear that they themselves will be sued for infringement. Unfortunately, this solution is not effective against patent trolls, who can only gain by bringing litigation against a large company.

Leading Patent Holders and Innovation Hotspots

When examining how many patents are there by organization, the Harrity & Harrity Patent 300® report (2025) identifies the top patent-owning companies in the U.S. These rankings show the concentration of innovation among technology giants and industrial leaders.

In 2025, the top patent recipients included:

  • IBM – Over 4,200 U.S. patents granted.
  • Samsung Electronics – Around 3,700 patents.
  • Canon, TSMC, and Huawei – Each exceeding 3,000 new patents.
  • Apple, Intel, and Qualcomm – Ranking in the top 20 with significant AI and semiconductor-related filings.

Together, the top 300 organizations accounted for over 130,000 patents issued in the United States in 2024. These portfolios represent key technological fields, including:

  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • Semiconductor fabrication and design.
  • Telecommunications and 5G/6G infrastructure.
  • Renewable and battery energy innovations.
  • Medical devices and biotechnology.

Understanding who holds the most patents provides insights into global technology leadership and investment patterns.

2015 US Patenting Statistics

After growth that was steady for nearly a decade, the number of published patents leveled out in 2015. While the number of patents published in 2015 was a record, it only topped the 2014 number by a few thousand publications.

The number of documents for 2014 and 2015 was essentially even, and utility patent publications dropped for the first time in 10 years. Design patent publications did increase, but not by as large an amount as previous years.

Current U.S. Patent Data and Filing Trends

Since 2015, U.S. patent activity has continued to rise steadily. The USPTO reports that by 2024, more than 12 million patents had been granted in total since its inception, with over 400,000 new patents issued annually.

Utility patents (covering new inventions or improvements) still dominate, while design and plant patents show moderate but consistent growth. The most active sectors include:

  • Computer technology and telecommunications – roughly 25% of all filings.
  • Medical technology and pharmaceuticals – approximately 15%.
  • Electrical machinery, transport, and energy technologies – around 20%.

WIPO data also shows a significant increase in international patent cooperation under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), allowing inventors to file across multiple jurisdictions through a single application.

These trends illustrate both the scale of U.S. innovation and its integration within the global patent system.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How many patents are there worldwide? As of 2025, there are over 16 million active patent families worldwide, with total granted patents exceeding 25 million when counting all jurisdictions.

2. Which country has the most patents? China leads globally, accounting for nearly half of all new patent filings each year, followed by the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Germany.

3. Who owns the most patents in the U.S.? According to the 2025 Patent 300® report, IBM, Samsung, and Canon are among the top patent owners.

4. How many patents does the average company hold? It varies widely—large technology firms may hold tens of thousands, while startups may have only a handful of patents focused on core innovations.

5. Why is tracking patent numbers important? Monitoring patent statistics helps assess global innovation trends, identify leading industries, and evaluate intellectual property strategies for businesses and governments.

If you need help with learning about the number of patents, you can post your legal needs on UpCounsel's marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb.