The US Patent and Trademark Office this week issued US Patent 8,000,000. As detailed in the USPTO press release, the patent deals with a visual prosthetic that helps people with retinal degeneration. Since US Patent 1 in 1836, the USPTO has gradually been issuing patents at faster and faster rates:
| US Patent Number | Issue Date | Time Lapsed |
| 1 | July 13, 1836 | |
| 1,000,000 | August 8, 1911 | 75 years, 26 days |
| 2,000,000 | April 30, 1935 | 25 years. 265 days |
| 3,000,000 | September 12, 1961 | 26 years, 135 days |
| 4,000,000 | December 28, 1976 | 15 years, 107 days |
| 5,000,000 | March 19, 1991 | 14 years, 80 days |
| 6,000,000 | December 7, 1999 | 8 years, 263 days |
| 7,000,000 | February 14, 2006 | 6 years, 69 days |
| 8,000,000 | August 16, 2011 | 5 years, 182 days |
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Fitting a decreasing growth rate to this data would put US Pat 9,000,000?s issue date around August 11, 2015 (almost 4 years from now).
This might sound like a lot of patents, but a few perspectives might make the number sound more reasonable:
-Looking at all issued patents since 1836, there is approximately 1 patent for every 39 people currently living in the US.
-Looking at all Americans who have lived since the mid 1800s, there is approximately 1 patent for every 130 people who have lived in America during that time.
-Looking at the populations of the top 12 nations filing US patents, there is approximately 1 patent for every 106 people currently living in these nations.
-Accounting for patent expiry since 1836, at least 28% (2,230,000) of the eight million issued patent remain in force today; the remaining have likely expired due to term or maintenance fee non-payment.
-Looking at the total number of applications filed since the last milestone in 2006, in that time there is approximately 1 patent issued for every 2.23 applications filed.
These numbers use rough calculations and deal only with US utility patents. It?s further worth keeping in mind that a minimum of 21% of current issued patents claim priority to a US non-provisional application, and another substantial percentage claim priority to a same foreign-priority application, such that the actual number of unique ?inventions? or disclosures represented by US patents is likely much lower than 8,000,000. Further taking into account the huge number of patent expirations and tiny fraction of enforced patents that have been invalidated, the number of unique inventions that are currently infringeable is probably closer to 1,000,000.
Lastly, it?s interesting to compare the USPTO press releases for the past three milestone patents. The press release for US Pat 6,000,000 in 1999 very must reflects an enthusiastic, untaught hope that patent 6,000,000 embodied what wonders e-commerce and digital communications might bring in the coming millennium. Contrast this with the measured tone and brevity of the 2006 press release for US patent 7,000,000, whose focus on the sheer number and rapidity of patent growth perhaps reflects the Dudas-era USPTO?s advancing skepticism about over-patenting. This week?s press release for US patent 8,000,000 represents a return, certainly in tone, to the celebratory 1999-style press release, but tinged with reminders ? observations of government-industry partnerships and propositions of patents as job growth drivers ? that the mood of the day remains clouded with economic concerns.
Source: http://alleylegal.com/2011/08/us-patent-8000000/
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