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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		6416	2838	44.2%	1972—2024	52.5	122	3.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Kia Silverbrook		4747	1311	27.6%	1994—2014	20	237	1.6	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Tao Luo		3511	2949	84.0%	2006—2024	18.4	191	5.6	USA	Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng		2751	1511	54.9%	2004—2024	19.9	138	3.9	USA	IBM
Frederick E. Shelton IV		2407	1131	47.0%	2005—2024	19.3	125	4.5	USA	Ethicon
Junyi Li		2245	1905	84.9%	2002—2024	21.9	103	5.2	USA	Qualcomm
Peter Gaal		2210	1701	77.0%	2002—2024	22.2	100	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen		2070	1600	77.3%	2009—2024	15.5	134	5.7	USA	Qualcomm
Lowell L. Wood, Jr.		1996	1325	66.4%	1971—2024	52.5	38	8.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Roderick A. Hyde		1890	1252	66.2%	2001—2023	22.4	84	8.7	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chen-Hua Yu		1755	945	53.8%	1996—2024	28.4	62	4.9	Taiwan	TSMC
Xiaoxia Zhang		1668	1444	86.6%	2009—2024	15.7	106	5.5	USA	Qualcomm
Hanbyul Seo		1660	1218	73.4%	2012—2024	12.5	133	3.8	South Korea	LG
Esmael H. Dinan		1595	676	42.4%	2006—2024	18.3	87	3.6	USA	Ofinno
Jun Koyama		1493	618	41.4%	1991—2024	33.2	45	3.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Gurtej Singh Sandhu		1427	584	40.9%	1991—2024	33	43	2.5	USA	Micron
Jing Sun		1400	1185	84.6%	2012—2024	11.8	119	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Sarbajit K. Rakshit		1313	1095	83.4%	2013—2024	11.8	111	3.4	India	IBM
Paul Lapstun		1305	246	18.9%	2000—2022	21.4	61	2.5	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Shou-Shan Fan		1305	1091	83.6%	2006—2024	18.4	71	4.2	China	Hon Hai
Clarence T. Tegreene		1248	903	72.4%	2000—2024	23.5	53	10.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Alexander Reznicek		1245	744	59.8%	2006—2024	18.5	67	3.9	USA	IBM
Shan Liu		1198	796	66.4%	2013—2024	11.1	108	3.4	USA	Tencent
Satoshi Seo		1188	565	47.6%	2002—2024	21.8	54	4.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Suckchel Yang		1178	759	64.4%	2013—2024	11.3	104	4.7	South Korea	LG
Kijun Kim		1148	798	69.5%	2013—2024	10.8	106	4.6	South Korea	LG
Joonkui Ahn		1121	727	64.9%	2013—2024	11.2	100	4.7	South Korea	LG
Edward K. Y. Jung		1111	794	71.5%	1996—2022	26.1	43	8.0	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Leonard Forbes		1109	411	37.1%	1975—2019	43.3	26	2.6	USA	Micron
Juan Montojo		1101	900	81.7%	2004—2024	20.6	53	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Thomas Edison		1084	NA	NA	1869—1933	63.9	17	1.0	USA	Thomas Edison
Rick Allen Hamilton II		1062	714	67.2%	1999—2024	25	42	4.2	USA	IBM
Marta Karczewicz		1062	875	82.4%	2000—2024	23.8	45	4.0	USA	Qualcomm
Jason L. Harris		1040	608	58.5%	2011—2024	13.8	75	6.0	USA	Ethicon
Ruilong Xie		1030	769	74.7%	2013—2024	11.7	88	4.2	USA	IBM
Jason K. Resch		1008	505	50.1%	2009—2024	15.1	67	4.2	USA	IBM
Takahiro Nishi		1006	353	35.1%	2001—2024	23.1	44	6.3	Japan	Panasonic
Tingfang Ji		1004	745	74.2%	2006—2024	18.2	55	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Donald E. Weder		1000	395	39.5%	1978—2015	37.1	27	1.1	USA	Weder Family Trust
Michael J. Sullivan		994	534	53.7%	1989—2024	34.5	29	3.8	USA	Acushnet Holdings
George Albert Lyon		993	NA	NA	1901—1965	64.5	15	1.0	Canada	Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare		989	640	64.7%	1992—2023	30.5	32	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Yunjung Yi		984	696	70.7%	2015—2024	8.9	111	3.3	South Korea	LG
Jay S. Walker		979	422	43.1%	1998—2024	26.3	37	5.2	USA	Walker Digital
Ahmadreza Rofougaran		955	463	48.5%	2002—2024	22.3	43	6.4	USA	Broadcom
John F. O'Connor		949	NA	NA	1901—1935	33.9	28	NA	USA	William H. Miner
Seungmin Lee		942	692	73.5%	2014—2024	10	94	3.5	South Korea	LG
Melvin De Groote		925	NA	NA	1924—1966	41.8	22	NA	USA	Petrolite
David R. Hall		916	760	83.0%	1985—2024	39.3	23	3.8	USA	Hall Labs
Hao Xu		908	649	71.5%	2005—2024	19.5	47	4.7	China	Qualcomm
Nathan Myhrvold		905	613	67.7%	1994—2024	29.7	30	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
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
Hajime Kimura		889	281	31.6%	2002—2024	21.9	41	2.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Mark Malamud		886	690	77.9%	1997—2022	25.1	35	7.5	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Robert W. Lord		867	682	78.7%	2003—2024	20.4	42	7.6	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hongyuan Zhang		865	475	54.9%	2009—2024	15.4	56	3.9	USA	Marvell
Royce A. Levien		855	666	77.9%	1997—2020	23.5	36	6.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Muriel Y. Ishikawa		839	560	66.7%	2002—2023	21.2	40	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chih-Chao Yang		838	522	62.3%	2003—2024	20.8	40	3.4	USA	IBM
Michael K. Gschwind		836	442	52.9%	2001—2021	20.6	41	2.6	USA	IBM
Clifford A. Pickover		835	548	65.6%	1992—2024	32.2	26	3.9	USA	IBM
Lee D. Whetsel		834	128	15.3%	1991—2017	26.4	32	1.1	USA	Texas Instruments
Devendra K. Sadana		812	457	56.3%	1983—2024	41.5	20	4.3	USA	IBM
Yan Zhou		795	708	89.1%	2012—2024	12.1	66	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
SungDuck Chun		794	486	61.2%	2007—2024	16.9	47	3.8	South Korea	LG
Stuart C. Salter		793	745	93.9%	2009—2024	14.8	54	4.8	USA	Ford
Youngdae Lee		790	621	78.6%	2014—2024	10.5	75	3.1	South Korea	LG
Salman Akram		783	290	37.0%	1995—2024	28.6	27	2.9	USA	Micron
Hsien-Wei Chen		778	381	49.0%	2005—2024	19.6	40	3.5	Taiwan	TSMC
Warren M. Farnworth		774	289	37.3%	1990—2020	24.4	32	2.8	USA	Micron
James A. Jorasch		770	309	40.1%	1994—2023	29	27	3.9	USA	Walker Digital
Bruce B. Doris		763	433	56.7%	1995—2023	28.6	27	4.2	USA	IBM
Justin T. Mason		763	759	99.5%	2008—2024	15.9	48	1.0	USA	MS Technologies
Jeyhan Karaoguz		757	371	49.0%	1996—2020	23.8	32	4.6	USA	Broadcom
Carleton Ellis		753	NA	NA	1902—1946	43.1	17	NA	USA	Ellis Foster Co
Satoshi Nagata		752	715	95.1%	2011—2024	13	58	4.0	Japan	NTT
Ali Khakifirooz		751	407	54.2%	2011—2024	12.9	58	4.2	USA	IBM
Xue Dong		750	730	97.3%	2010—2024	13.8	54	7.4	China	BOE
Kyungmin Park		741	391	52.8%	2014—2024	10.5	71	5.2	USA	Ofinno
John M. Santosuosso		738	466	63.1%	2001—2022	20.7	36	3.9	USA	IBM
Hideo Ando		733	123	16.8%	1983—2020	36.7	20	3.1	Japan	Toshiba
Frederick A. Ware		725	227	31.3%	1981—2024	42.8	17	2.8	USA	Rambus
George Spector		723	723	100%	1974—1998	24.6	29	2.1	USA	George Spector
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur		723	587	81.2%	2006—2024	18.4	39	2.6	France	Cisco Systems
Shougo Sato		723	282	39.0%	1992—2024	32	23	1.8	Japan	Brother
Austin L. Gurney		718	182	25.3%	1999—2021	21.6	33	2.9	USA	Genentech
Lisa Seacat DeLuca		712	516	72.5%	2009—2024	15.7	45	2.7	USA	IBM
Gregory J. Boss		710	487	68.6%	2008—2024	16.6	43	4.2	USA	IBM
Tetsujiro Kondo		700	528	75.4%	1987—2021	34	21	3.8	Japan	Sony
Chung-Shi Liu		698	378	54.2%	2000—2024	24.7	28	6.1	Taiwan	TSMC
Elihu Thomson		696	NA	NA	1899—1935	35.9	19	NA	USA	GE
Irwin Gerszberg		682	312	45.7%	1994—2023	29.2	23	6.8	USA	AT&T
Eric C. Leuthardt		680	459	67.5%	2006—2024	17.8	38	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hua Zhou		668	383	57.3%	2012—2024	12.7	53	5.5	USA	Ofinno
Woosuk Ko		664	264	39.8%	2015—2024	9.5	70	3.4	South Korea	LG
Xiaochuan Chen		659	641	97.3%	2014—2024	10.2	65	7.0	China	BOE
Aleksandar Damnjanovic		658	483	73.4%	2003—2024	21.2	31	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
Paul S. Henry		657	301	45.8%	1978—2023	44.9	15	6.3	USA	AT&T
William I. Wood		653	259	39.7%	1981—2013	32.2	20	5.2	USA	Genentech

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

• Inventors
• Science-related lists
• Lists of inventors