Puget Patent, Seattle Patent Attorney

9 Million Patents

Posted Wednesday, March 25, 2015.

I received an issue notification for a client today informing me that the projected patent, which will issue on April 7, 2015, will have a patent serial number beginning with a 9.

The USPTO has been increasing the number of patents issued every year. It was only in 2011 that we crossed the threshold into 8-series patents (August 16, 2011 to be exact). Since patent serial numbers are issued sequentially beginning with U.S. Patent No. 1 (which issued in 1836), that means 9 million patents have been issued under the current numbering system.

Patent number 1,000,000 issued in 1911, so it took 75 years for the first million patents to issue. Now it takes less than four years for a million patents to be issued. With 8,000+ patent examiners now employed by the USPTO, and new accelerated examination initiatives, the production rate is very high.

Congratulations to the inventors whose collective innovation has resulted in nine million patents!

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