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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Keithrwalker (talk | contribs) at 01:45, 28 August 2024 (→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		Pats	Fams	Fam %	Pat Yrs	Yrs	Pat /Yr	Inv /Pat	Pat Residence	Majority Assignment
Shunpei Yamazaki		6381	2823	44.2%	1972—2024	52.4	122	3.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Kia Silverbrook		4747	1311	27.6%	1994—2014	20	237	1.6	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Tao Luo		3410	2861	83.9%	2006—2024	18.2	187	5.6	USA	Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng		2739	1499	54.7%	2004—2024	19.7	139	3.9	USA	IBM
Frederick E. Shelton IV		2370	1119	47.2%	2005—2024	19.2	123	4.5	USA	Ethicon
Junyi Li		2185	1852	84.8%	2002—2024	21.8	100	5.2	USA	Qualcomm
Peter Gaal		2154	1655	76.8%	2002—2024	22	98	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen		2039	1575	77.2%	2009—2024	15.3	133	5.7	USA	Qualcomm
Lowell L. Wood, Jr.		1995	1325	66.4%	1971—2024	52.8	38	8.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Roderick A. Hyde		1890	1252	66.2%	2001—2024	23.2	81	8.7	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chen-Hua Yu		1737	941	54.2%	1996—2024	28.2	62	4.9	Taiwan	TSMC
Hanbyul Seo		1636	1197	73.2%	2012—2024	12.3	133	3.8	South Korea	LG
Xiaoxia Zhang		1619	1404	86.7%	2009—2024	15.6	104	5.5	USA	Qualcomm
Esmael H. Dinan		1525	650	42.6%	2006—2024	18.2	84	3.6	USA	Ofinno
Jun Koyama		1490	618	41.5%	1991—2024	33.1	45	3.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Gurtej Singh Sandhu		1427	584	40.9%	1991—2024	33	43	2.5	USA	Micron
Jing Sun		1356	1150	84.8%	2012—2024	11.7	116	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Paul Lapstun		1304	246	18.9%	2000—2023	23	57	2.5	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Shou-Shan Fan		1303	1089	83.6%	2006—2024	18.3	71	4.2	China	Hon Hai
Sarbajit K. Rakshit		1281	1066	83.2%	2013—2024	11.6	110	3.4	India	IBM
Clarence T. Tegreene		1247	903	72.4%	2000—2024	23.7	53	10.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Alexander Reznicek		1237	738	59.7%	2006—2024	18.3	68	3.9	USA	IBM
Satoshi Seo		1172	555	47.4%	2002—2024	21.7	54	4.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Suckchel Yang		1157	749	64.7%	2013—2024	11.1	104	4.7	South Korea	LG
Kijun Kim		1145	797	69.6%	2013—2024	10.7	107	4.6	South Korea	LG
Shan Liu		1134	761	67.1%	2013—2024	10.9	104	3.4	USA	Tencent
Joonkui Ahn		1111	725	65.3%	2013—2024	11.1	100	4.7	South Korea	LG
Leonard Forbes		1109	411	37.1%	1975—2019	43.3	26	2.6	USA	Micron
Edward K. Y. Jung		1109	794	71.6%	1996—2023	27.4	40	8.0	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Thomas Edison		1084	NA	NA	1869—1933	63.9	17	1.0	USA	Thomas Edison
Juan Montojo		1076	879	81.7%	2004—2024	20.5	52	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Rick Allen Hamilton II		1062	714	67.2%	1999—2024	25	42	4.2	USA	IBM
Marta Karczewicz		1055	871	82.6%	2000—2024	23.6	45	4.0	USA	Qualcomm
Jason L. Harris		1017	601	59.1%	2011—2024	13.6	75	6.0	USA	Ethicon
Ruilong Xie		1015	755	74.4%	2013—2024	11.6	88	4.2	USA	IBM
Donald E. Weder		1000	395	39.5%	1978—2015	37.1	27	1.1	USA	Weder Family Trust
Jason K. Resch		1000	501	50.1%	2009—2024	15	67	4.2	USA	IBM
George Albert Lyon		993	NA	NA	1901—1965	64.5	15	1.0	Canada	Lyon George Albert
Michael J. Sullivan		993	534	53.8%	1989—2024	34.9	28	3.8	USA	Acushnet Holdings
Jordin T. Kare		989	640	64.7%	1992—2024	31.8	31	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Tingfang Ji		987	732	74.2%	2006—2024	18	55	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Jay S. Walker		979	422	43.1%	1998—2024	26.3	37	5.2	USA	Walker Digital
Yunjung Yi		979	694	70.9%	2015—2024	8.8	111	3.3	South Korea	LG
Takahiro Nishi		977	348	35.6%	2001—2024	23	42	6.3	Japan	Panasonic
John F. O'Connor		949	NA	NA	1901—1935	33.9	28	NA	USA	William H. Miner
Ahmadreza Rofougaran		948	459	48.4%	2002—2024	22.1	43	6.4	USA	Broadcom
Melvin De Groote		925	NA	NA	1924—1966	41.8	22	NA	USA	Petrolite
Seungmin Lee		920	674	73.3%	2014—2024	9.8	94	3.5	South Korea	LG
David R. Hall		909	754	82.9%	1985—2024	39	23	3.8	USA	Hall Labs
Nathan Myhrvold		905	613	67.7%	1994—2024	29.7	30	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hao Xu		901	643	71.4%	2005—2024	19.3	47	4.7	China	Qualcomm
William H. Eby		899	895	99.6%	1994—2024	30.2	30	1.2	USA	Monsanto
Francis H. Richards		894	NA	NA	1899—1930	30.8	29	NA	USA	Francis H. Richards
Mark Malamud		885	690	78.0%	1997—2023	25.9	34	7.5	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hajime Kimura		883	279	31.6%	2002—2024	21.7	41	2.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Robert W. Lord		866	682	78.8%	2003—2024	20.4	42	7.6	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hongyuan Zhang		858	472	55.0%	2009—2024	15.3	56	3.9	USA	Marvell
Royce A. Levien		854	666	78.0%	1997—2023	25.9	33	6.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Muriel Y. Ishikawa		839	560	66.7%	2002—2024	22	38	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Michael K. Gschwind		836	442	52.9%	2001—2024	23.2	36	2.6	USA	IBM
Clifford A. Pickover		834	548	65.7%	1992—2024	32.3	26	3.9	USA	IBM
Chih-Chao Yang		834	519	62.2%	2003—2024	20.6	40	3.4	USA	IBM
Lee D. Whetsel		832	128	15.4%	1991—2024	33.3	25	1.1	USA	Texas Instruments
Devendra K. Sadana		811	457	56.4%	1983—2024	41.5	20	4.3	USA	IBM
SungDuck Chun		790	482	61.0%	2007—2024	16.7	47	3.8	South Korea	LG
Salman Akram		783	290	37.0%	1995—2024	29.1	27	2.9	USA	Micron
Youngdae Lee		778	615	79.0%	2014—2024	10.4	75	3.1	South Korea	LG
Warren M. Farnworth		774	289	37.3%	1990—2020	24.4	32	2.8	USA	Micron
Stuart C. Salter		772	724	93.8%	2009—2024	14.7	53	4.8	USA	Ford
James A. Jorasch		770	309	40.1%	1994—2024	29.8	26	3.9	USA	Walker Digital
Hsien-Wei Chen		769	381	49.5%	2005—2024	19.5	39	3.5	Taiwan	TSMC
Bruce B. Doris		763	433	56.7%	1995—2023	28.7	27	4.2	USA	IBM
Jeyhan Karaoguz		757	371	49.0%	1996—2024	27.5	28	4.6	USA	Broadcom
Yan Zhou		757	675	89.2%	2012—2024	12	63	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
Justin T. Mason		756	752	99.5%	2008—2024	15.8	48	1.0	USA	MS Technologies
Carleton Ellis		753	NA	NA	1902—1946	43.1	17	NA	USA	Ellis Foster Co
Ali Khakifirooz		751	407	54.2%	2011—2024	12.9	58	4.2	USA	IBM
Xue Dong		744	727	97.7%	2010—2024	13.6	55	7.4	China	BOE
John M. Santosuosso		738	466	63.1%	2001—2024	22.5	33	3.9	USA	IBM
Hideo Ando		733	123	16.8%	1983—2020	36.7	20	3.1	Japan	Toshiba
Satoshi Nagata		728	691	94.9%	2011—2024	12.9	56	4.0	Japan	NTT
George Spector		723	723	100%	1974—1998	24.6	29	2.1	USA	George Spector
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur		722	586	81.2%	2006—2024	18.3	39	2.6	France	Cisco Systems
Austin L. Gurney		718	182	25.3%	1999—2021	21.6	33	2.9	USA	Genentech
Frederick A. Ware		718	227	31.6%	1981—2024	42.7	17	2.8	USA	Rambus
Shougo Sato		717	279	38.9%	1992—2024	31.8	23	1.8	Japan	Brother
Lisa Seacat DeLuca		708	513	72.5%	2009—2024	15.4	46	2.7	USA	IBM
Gregory J. Boss		708	485	68.5%	2008—2024	16.4	43	4.2	USA	IBM
Kyungmin Park		702	377	53.7%	2014—2024	10.3	68	5.2	USA	Ofinno
Tetsujiro Kondo		700	528	75.4%	1987—2021	34	21	3.8	Japan	Sony
Elihu Thomson		696	NA	NA	1899—1935	35.9	19	NA	USA	GE
Chung-Shi Liu		693	380	54.8%	2000—2024	24.6	28	6.1	Taiwan	TSMC
Irwin Gerszberg		682	312	45.7%	1994—2024	30.3	23	6.8	USA	AT&T
Eric C. Leuthardt		679	458	67.5%	2006—2024	17.8	38	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Paul S. Henry		657	301	45.8%	1978—2024	46.3	14	6.3	USA	AT&T
Woosuk Ko		657	257	39.1%	2015—2024	9.3	71	3.4	South Korea	LG
Xiaochuan Chen		656	639	97.4%	2014—2024	10.1	65	7.0	China	BOE
William I. Wood		653	259	39.7%	1981—2013	32.2	20	5.2	USA	Genentech
Aleksandar Damnjanovic		653	480	73.5%	2003—2024	21	31	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
Simon R. Walmsley		651	171	26.3%	1995—2012	17.2	38	3.2	Australia	Silverbrook Research

This table is usually updated every Tuesday, and is current as of August 27, 2024.

The columns are defined as follows:

• Inventor: The name of the inventor.
• Pats: 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.
• Fams: The number of patent families, which in USPTO data includes an original or continuation-in-part patent by itself or with one or more continuation or divisional patents based on the original or continuation-in-part patent. This is different than global patent families that represent a patent filed in more than one jurisdiction. "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records.
• Fam %: The percentage of original and continuation-in-part patents that are in the inventor's patent portfolio . "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records.
• Pat Yrs: The first and last year in which an inventor received a patent issuance.
• Yrs: The number of years from first issuance to most recent issuance, rounded to first decimal based on dates.
• Pats /Yr: The average number of patents received per year .
• Inv / Pat: 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.
• Pat Residence: The country of inventor's residence listed in their most recent patent issuance.
• 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. 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.

A more extensive list of prolific inventors with additional information and ability to filter on country, gender, time period, patent type, and Nobel laureate title can be found at idiyas.com/top/inventors. There are some discrepancies with this article due to different inventor queries that attempt to account for data issues such as typos and multiple inventors with the same name.

See also

• Timeline of historic inventions
• List of inventors

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

• Inventors
• Science-related lists
• Lists of inventors