After years of a slow but steady rise in patenting activity at universities and research institutes across the globe, patenting rates have declined for the last two years, albeit modestly. Whether that involves a real downturn in activity, a backlog at the patent offices, or a shift from traditional technologies to newer ones not being captured in our searches is unclear. Notwithstanding this decline, patenting activity at the highest echelons of academia is essentially unchanged. The same standalone universities — Stanford, Harvard, MIT — top the list as in the past few years, and their annual as well as average number of patents granted are essentially unchanged. Harvard has worked its way into the top spot for quantity and for impact, largely due to gene editing technologies. Scripps Institute, which has always been in the top five of research institutes, was supplanted by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is appearing for the first time in our data.
First assignee | Total (2018–2022) | Yearly average | Total USPTO (2018–2022) | Total EPO (2018–2022) | 2022 USPTO | 2022 total | No. in top 50 (next 50)a |
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University of California System | 1,665 | 333.0 | 1367 | 298 | 241 | 278 | 4 (6) |
Harvard University | 784 | 156.8 | 582 | 202 | 121 | 150 | 19 (16) |
Stanford University | 676 | 135.2 | 548 | 128 | 89 | 108 | 5 (2) |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 639 | 127.8 | 522 | 117 | 120 | 135 | 1 (2) |
University of Texas System | 587 | 117.4 | 486 | 101 | 90 | 101 | 2 (1) |
University of Pennsylvania | 533 | 106.6 | 420 | 113 | 75 | 94 | 1 (1) |
Johns Hopkins University | 469 | 93.8 | 384 | 85 | 65 | 78 | 0 (0) |
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation | 368 | 73.6 | 330 | 38 | 55 | 58 | 1 (0) |
University of Washington | 367 | 73.4 | 298 | 69 | 66 | 75 | 6 (1) |
Duke University | 331 | 66.2 | 280 | 51 | 72 | 80 | 0 (0) |
Cornell University | 331 | 66.2 | 259 | 72 | 38 | 44 | 0 (0) |
University of Pittsburgh | 307 | 61.4 | 262 | 45 | 48 | 52 | 1 (0) |
California Institute of Technology | 276 | 55.2 | 237 | 39 | 42 | 46 | 2 (0) |
University of Massachusetts | 267 | 53.4 | 216 | 51 | 48 | 56 | 0 (0) |
Columbia University | 266 | 53.2 | 215 | 51 | 37 | 43 | 0 (1) |
Yale University | 259 | 51.8 | 214 | 45 | 35 | 41 | 0 (1) |
University of Michigan | 257 | 51.4 | 203 | 54 | 35 | 50 | 0 (0) |
University of Florida | 251 | 50.2 | 217 | 34 | 45 | 50 | 0 (1) |
Northwestern University | 226 | 45.2 | 203 | 23 | 40 | 45 | 0 (0) |
University of Minnesota | 208 | 41.6 | 178 | 30 | 34 | 38 | 1 (0) |
- aBy number of citations. Query terms: university, college, research foundation, research organization, institute, school, plus our keyword and CPC-based searches. CPC, Cooperative Patent Classification, a joint effort of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO). Source: The Lens.
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