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List of prolific inventors

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Keithrwalker (talk | contribs) at 18:31, 29 November 2022 (→Prolific Inventors: Updated patent data). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The 100 known most prolific inventors based on worldwide utility patents are shown in the following table. While in many cases this is the number of utility patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, it may include utility patents granted by other countries, as noted by the source references for an inventor.

Prolific Inventors

Inventor Patents Residence Patent Years Years Patents / Year Inventors / Patent Majority assignment
Shunpei Yamazaki [1] 6051  Japan 1972—2022 50.6 120 3.6 Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Kia Silverbrook [2] 4747  Australia 1994—2014 20 237 1.6 Silverbrook Research
Kangguo Cheng [3] 2625  USA 2004—2022 18.1 145 3.9 IBM
Lowell L. Wood, Jr. [4] 1984  USA 1971—2022 51 39 8.8 Intellectual Ventures
Roderick A. Hyde [5] 1884  USA 2001—2022 21.5 88 8.7 Intellectual Ventures
Frederick E. Shelton IV [6] 1804  USA 2005—2022 17.4 104 4.5 Ethicon
Tao Luo [7] 1685  USA 2006—2022 16.5 102 5.6 Qualcomm
Peter Gaal [8] 1550  USA 2002—2022 20.3 76 5.9 Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen [9] 1513  USA 2009—2022 13.6 111 5.7 Qualcomm
Chen-Hua Yu [10] 1467  Taiwan 1996—2022 26.5 55 4.9 TSMC
Jun Koyama [11] 1458  Japan 1991—2022 30.8 47 3.1 Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Hanbyul Seo [12] 1406  South Korea 2012—2022 10.6 133 3.8 LG
Gurtej Singh Sandhu [13] 1403  USA 1991—2022 31.3 45 2.5 Micron
Paul Lapstun [14] 1302  Australia 2000—2022 21.4 61 2.5 Silverbrook Research
Junyi Li [15] 1294  USA 2002—2022 20 65 5.2 Qualcomm
Shou-Shan Fan [16] 1257  China 2006—2022 16.6 76 4.2 Hon Hai
Clarence T. Tegreene [17] 1240  USA 2000—2022 21.9 57 10.1 Intellectual Ventures
Alexander Reznicek [18] 1162  USA 2006—2022 16.6 70 3.9 IBM
Leonard Forbes [19] 1109  USA 1975—2019 43.3 26 2.6 Micron
Edward K. Y. Jung [20] 1106  USA 1996—2022 26.1 42 8.0 Intellectual Ventures
Thomas Edison [21] 1084  USA 1869—1933 63.9 17 NA Thomas Edison
Satoshi Seo [22] 1068  Japan 2002—2022 19.9 54 4.1 Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Rick Allen Hamilton II [23] 1052  USA 1999—2022 23.7 44 4.2 IBM
Kijun Kim [24] 1030  South Korea 2013—2022 8.9 116 4.6 LG
Donald E. Weder [25] 1000  USA 1978—2015 37.1 27 1.1 Weder Family Trust
George Albert Lyon [26] 993  Canada 1901—1965 64.5 15 1.0 Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare [27] 984  USA 1992—2022 29.9 33 9.1 Intellectual Ventures
Michael J. Sullivan [28] 982  USA 1989—2022 33.4 29 3.8 Acushnet Holdings
Esmael H. Dinan [29] 980  USA 2006—2022 16.4 60 3.6 Ofinno
Jay S. Walker [30] 974  USA 1998—2019 21.2 46 5.2 Walker Digital
Sarbajit K. Rakshit [31] 969  India 2013—2022 9.9 98 3.4 IBM
John F. O'Connor [32] 949  USA 1901—1935 33.9 28 NA William H. Miner
Joonkui Ahn [33] 941  South Korea 2013—2022 9.4 100 4.7 LG
Melvin De Groote [34] 925  USA 1924—1966 41.8 22 NA Petrolite
Jason K. Resch [35] 918  USA 2009—2022 13.2 70 4.2 IBM
Ahmadreza Rofougaran [36] 909  USA 2002—2022 20.4 45 6.4 Broadcom
Marta Karczewicz [37] 907  USA 2000—2022 21.9 41 4.0 Qualcomm
Nathan Myhrvold [38] 900  USA 1994—2022 28.1 32 11.1 Intellectual Ventures
Suckchel Yang [39] 898  South Korea 2013—2022 9.4 96 4.7 LG
Francis H. Richards [40] 894  USA 1899—1930 30.8 29 NA Francis H. Richards
Yunjung Yi [41] 894  South Korea 2015—2022 7 128 3.3 LG
Mark Malamud [42] 884  USA 1997—2022 25.1 35 7.5 Intellectual Ventures
Ruilong Xie [43] 876  USA 2013—2022 9.8 89 4.2 IBM
William H. Eby [44] 872  USA 1994—2022 28.4 31 1.2 Monsanto
Robert W. Lord [45] 863  USA 2003—2022 18.8 46 7.6 Intellectual Ventures
Royce A. Levien [46] 853  USA 1997—2020 23.4 36 6.8 Intellectual Ventures
David R. Hall [47] 851  USA 1985—2022 37.3 23 3.8 Hall Labs
Muriel Y. Ishikawa [48] 836  USA 2002—2022 19.9 42 11.1 Intellectual Ventures
Michael K. Gschwind [49] 832  USA 2001—2021 21.2 39 2.6 IBM
Clifford A. Pickover [50] 818  USA 1992—2022 30.7 27 3.9 IBM
Hajime Kimura [51] 804  Japan 2002—2022 20 40 2.6 Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Chih-Chao Yang [52] 799  USA 2003—2022 18.9 42 3.4 IBM
Lee D. Whetsel [53] 791  USA 1991—2022 31.5 25 1.1 Texas Instruments
Devendra K. Sadana [54] 785  USA 1983—2022 39.8 20 4.3 IBM
Salman Akram [55] 776  USA 1995—2022 27.2 29 2.9 Micron
Warren M. Farnworth [56] 774  USA 1990—2020 24.4 32 2.8 Micron
Tingfang Ji [57] 771  USA 2006—2022 16.3 47 6.9 Qualcomm
Xiaoxia Zhang [58] 770  USA 2009—2022 13.8 56 5.5 Qualcomm
SungDuck Chun [59] 767  South Korea 2007—2022 14.9 51 3.8 LG
Jeyhan Karaoguz [60] 756  USA 1996—2020 23.8 32 4.6 Broadcom
Bruce B. Doris [61] 754  USA 1995—2022 27.8 27 4.2 IBM
Carleton Ellis [62] 753  USA 1902—1946 43.1 17 NA Ellis Foster Co
Hongyuan Zhang [63] 749  USA 2009—2022 13.5 55 3.9 Marvell
Ali Khakifirooz [64] 746  USA 2011—2022 10.9 68 4.2 IBM
John M. Santosuosso [65] 736  USA 2001—2022 21.2 35 3.9 IBM
Hideo Ando [66] 733  Japan 1983—2020 36.7 20 3.1 Toshiba
George Spector [67] 723  USA 1974—1998 24.6 29 2.1 George Spector
Jason L. Harris [68] 723  USA 2011—2022 11.9 61 6.0 Ethicon
Austin L. Gurney [69] 718  USA 1999—2022 23 31 2.9 Genentech
Takahiro Nishi [70] 717  Japan 2001—2022 21.2 34 6.3 Panasonic
Juan Montojo [71] 705  USA 2004—2022 18.7 38 6.9 Qualcomm
Tetsujiro Kondo [72] 700  Japan 1987—2021 34 21 3.8 Sony
Elihu Thomson [73] 696  USA 1899—1935 35.9 19 NA GE
Xue Dong [74] 679  China 2010—2022 11.9 57 7.4 BOE
Gregory J. Boss [75] 675  USA 2008—2022 14.6 46 4.2 IBM
Lisa Seacat DeLuca [76] 673  USA 2009—2022 13.7 49 2.7 IBM
Irwin Gerszberg [77] 672  USA 1994—2022 28.6 23 6.8 AT&T
Eric C. Leuthardt [78] 671  USA 2006—2022 16 42 9.1 Intellectual Ventures
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur [79] 658  France 2006—2022 16.6 40 2.6 Cisco Systems
William I. Wood [80] 653  USA 1981—2013 32.2 20 5.2 Genentech
Simon R. Walmsley [81] 651  Australia 1995—2012 17.2 38 3.2 Silverbrook Research
Paul S. Henry [82] 651  USA 1978—2022 44.6 15 6.3 AT&T
Jing Sun [83] 650  USA 2012—2022 9.9 66 5.9 Qualcomm
Shan Liu [84] 649  USA 2013—2022 9.2 71 3.4 Tencent
Edward J. Nowak [85] 635  USA 1979—2021 41.1 15 3.0 IBM
Audrey D. Goddard [86] 626  USA 1997—2019 21.7 29 5.3 Genentech
Stuart C. Salter [87] 626  USA 2009—2022 12.9 49 4.8 Ford
Kie Y. Ahn [88] 622  USA 1970—2013 42.7 15 1.9 Micron
John D. Rinaldo, Jr [89] 619  USA 2002—2020 17.8 35 8.0 Intellectual Ventures
Justin T. Mason [90] 610  USA 2008—2022 13.9 44 1.0 MS Technologies
Frederick A. Ware [91] 609  USA 1981—2022 40.9 15 2.8 Rambus
Anthony K. Stamper [92] 602  USA 1998—2022 24.4 25 3.4 IBM
Tadahiro Ohmi [93] 597  Japan 1981—2018 36.9 16 4.5 Tadahiro Ohmi
Ronald S. Cok [94] 596  USA 1986—2022 36 17 3.7 Kodak
Béla Barényi [95] 595  Austria 1939—1979 39.6 15 NA Daimler
Robert S. Langer [96] 586  USA 1979—2022 43.2 14 5.0 MIT
Lawrence A. Clevenger [97] 584  USA 1996—2022 26.5 22 5.1 IBM
Paul J. Godowski [98] 579  USA 1994—2010 16.2 36 4.2 Genentech
Kai-Li Jiang [99] 578  China 2006—2022 16.4 35 4.6 Hon Hai
Jeffrey P. Gambino [100] 577  USA 1992—2021 28.9 20 4.4 IBM

This table is usually updated every Tuesday evening in US Eastern time, and is current as of November 29, 2022.

The columns are defined as follows:

  • Inventor: The name of the inventor.
  • Patents: The number of utility patents that have been issued. Only utility patents (or the international equivalent) are listed, as a utility patent is a patent for an invention. Not all patents are for inventions. Other patent types include: design patents for the ornamental design of an object; plant patents for plant varieties; and reissue patents, where a correction is made to an already granted patent. This list does not include patent applications (patents pending) as there is no guarantee that a patent application actually describes a novel invention until the patent is granted.
  • Residence: The country of inventor's residence listed in their most recent patent issuance.
  • Patent Years: The first and last year in which an inventor received a patent issuance.
  • Years: The number of years from first issuance to most recent issuance.
  • Patents / Year: The average number of patents received per year [Patents column divided by Years column, rounded].
  • Inventors / Patent: The average number of inventors listed on the inventor's most recent 50 patents as of September 7, 2021 or on the date the inventor was added to the table if later. "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records. Data is automated from the USPTO. This column requires 50 page loads per inventor, which is over 15,000 in total. Pages are not requested in parallel, wait for prior request to complete, and pause between requests to never burden the source. Therefore, it will seldom be refreshed due to automation run time and need to protect the source.
  • Majority assignment: The entity that has the most patents assigned from an inventor's portfolio. This is current and not original assignment. It is usually, but not always an indication of which company the inventor worked at for the majority of their patent activity.

Significance of inventions

This table is a sortable list of the most prolific inventors as measured by utility patents granted. It does not include other types of invention, such as inventions that were never applied for nor granted, for which there is no known source. Nor does the table attempt to measure the significance of an inventor and their inventions. The significance of inventions is often not apparent until many decades after the invention has been made. For recent inventors, it is not yet possible to determine their place in history.

Various published lists

Rankings of prolific inventors have been published at various times. However, until the patent records were digitized, these lists were very tedious to prepare, as many thousands of patent records had to be checked manually. Even after digitization, it is still not a simple process. While the USPTO keeps statistics for annual rankings of inventions assigned to companies, it no longer publishes rankings of individual inventors. The last such list was published by the USPTO in 1998.[Info 1] Also, patents predating 1976 have not yet been digitized in the USPTO records. This means that patents before 1976 will not be included in a USPTO search by inventor name, and the number of patents granted before 1976 must be added to current searches.

See also

References

  1. ^ "USPTO publication: Prolific Inventors Receiving Utility Patents 1988–1997" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-05-02. Retrieved 2011-07-12.

References of Inventors' Patents

  1. ^ Shunpei Yamazaki
  2. ^ Kia Silverbrook
  3. ^ Kangguo Cheng
  4. ^ Lowell L. Wood, Jr.
  5. ^ Roderick A. Hyde
  6. ^ Frederick E. Shelton IV
  7. ^ Tao Luo
  8. ^ Peter Gaal
  9. ^ Wanshi Chen
  10. ^ Chen-Hua Yu
  11. ^ Jun Koyama
  12. ^ Hanbyul Seo
  13. ^ Gurtej Singh Sandhu
  14. ^ Paul Lapstun
  15. ^ Junyi Li
  16. ^ Shou-Shan Fan
  17. ^ Clarence T. Tegreene
  18. ^ Alexander Reznicek
  19. ^ Leonard Forbes
  20. ^ Edward K. Y. Jung
  21. ^ Thomas Edison
  22. ^ Satoshi Seo
  23. ^ Rick Allen Hamilton II
  24. ^ Kijun Kim
  25. ^ Donald E. Weder
  26. ^ George Albert Lyon
  27. ^ Jordin T. Kare
  28. ^ Michael J. Sullivan
  29. ^ Esmael H. Dinan
  30. ^ Jay S. Walker
  31. ^ Sarbajit K. Rakshit
  32. ^ John F. O'Connor
  33. ^ Joonkui Ahn
  34. ^ Melvin De Groote
  35. ^ Jason K. Resch
  36. ^ Ahmadreza Rofougaran
  37. ^ Marta Karczewicz
  38. ^ Nathan Myhrvold
  39. ^ Suckchel Yang
  40. ^ Francis H. Richards
  41. ^ Yunjung Yi
  42. ^ Mark Malamud
  43. ^ Ruilong Xie
  44. ^ William H. Eby
  45. ^ Robert W. Lord
  46. ^ Royce A. Levien
  47. ^ David R. Hall
  48. ^ Muriel Y. Ishikawa
  49. ^ Michael K. Gschwind
  50. ^ Clifford A. Pickover
  51. ^ Hajime Kimura
  52. ^ Chih-Chao Yang
  53. ^ Lee D. Whetsel
  54. ^ Devendra K. Sadana
  55. ^ Salman Akram
  56. ^ Warren M. Farnworth
  57. ^ Tingfang Ji
  58. ^ Xiaoxia Zhang
  59. ^ SungDuck Chun
  60. ^ Jeyhan Karaoguz
  61. ^ Bruce B. Doris
  62. ^ Carleton Ellis
  63. ^ Hongyuan Zhang
  64. ^ Ali Khakifirooz
  65. ^ John M. Santosuosso
  66. ^ Hideo Ando
  67. ^ George Spector
  68. ^ Jason L. Harris
  69. ^ Austin L. Gurney
  70. ^ Takahiro Nishi
  71. ^ Juan Montojo
  72. ^ Tetsujiro Kondo
  73. ^ Elihu Thomson
  74. ^ Xue Dong
  75. ^ Gregory J. Boss
  76. ^ Lisa Seacat DeLuca
  77. ^ Irwin Gerszberg
  78. ^ Eric C. Leuthardt
  79. ^ Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur
  80. ^ William I. Wood
  81. ^ Simon R. Walmsley
  82. ^ Paul S. Henry
  83. ^ Jing Sun
  84. ^ Shan Liu
  85. ^ Edward J. Nowak
  86. ^ Audrey D. Goddard
  87. ^ Stuart C. Salter
  88. ^ Kie Y. Ahn
  89. ^ John D. Rinaldo, Jr
  90. ^ Justin T. Mason
  91. ^ Frederick A. Ware
  92. ^ Anthony K. Stamper
  93. ^ Tadahiro Ohmi
  94. ^ Ronald S. Cok
  95. ^ Béla Barényi
  96. ^ Robert S. Langer
  97. ^ Lawrence A. Clevenger
  98. ^ Paul J. Godowski
  99. ^ Kai-Li Jiang
  100. ^ Jeffrey P. Gambino
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