List of prolific inventors

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 [1] 6677 2940 44.0% 1972—2026 53.9 124 3.6 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Kia Silverbrook [2] 4747 1311 27.6% 1994—2014 20 237 1.6 Australia Silverbrook Research
Tao Luo [3] 4511 3770 83.6% 2006—2026 19.8 228 5.6 USA Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng [4] 2853 1586 55.6% 2004—2026 21.3 134 3.9 USA IBM
Junyi Li [5] 2764 2337 84.6% 2002—2026 23.4 118 5.2 USA Qualcomm
Frederick E. Shelton IV [6] 2708 1238 45.7% 2005—2026 20.7 131 4.5 USA Ethicon
Peter Gaal [7] 2592 1999 77.1% 2002—2026 23.6 110 5.9 USA Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen [8] 2381 1829 76.8% 2009—2026 16.9 141 5.7 USA Qualcomm
Xiaoxia Zhang [9] 2230 1896 85.0% 2009—2026 17.2 130 5.5 USA Qualcomm
Esmael H. Dinan [10] 2029 840 41.4% 2006—2026 19.7 103 3.6 USA Ofinno
Lowell L. Wood, Jr. [11] 2001 1328 66.4% 1971—2026 54.3 37 8.8 USA Intellectual Ventures
Chen-Hua Yu [12] 1931 1002 51.9% 1996—2026 29.8 65 4.9 Taiwan TSMC
Roderick A. Hyde [13] 1892 1252 66.2% 2001—2023 22.4 84 8.7 USA Intellectual Ventures
Jing Sun [14] 1850 1553 83.9% 2012—2026 13.2 140 5.9 USA Qualcomm
Hanbyul Seo [15] 1812 1354 74.7% 2012—2026 13.9 130 3.8 South Korea LG
Shan Liu [16] 1693 1086 64.1% 2013—2026 12.5 135 3.4 USA Tencent
Sarbajit K. Rakshit [17] 1555 1328 85.4% 2013—2026 13.2 118 3.4 India IBM
Jun Koyama [18] 1513 618 40.8% 1991—2022 30.8 49 3.1 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Gurtej Singh Sandhu [19] 1434 584 40.7% 1991—2024 32.5 44 2.5 USA Micron
Yunjung Yi [20] 1425 962 67.5% 2011—2026 15.2 94 3.3 USA LG
Shou-Shan Fan [21] 1317 1102 83.7% 2006—2026 19.9 66 4.2 China Hon Hai
Paul Lapstun [22] 1306 247 18.9% 2000—2026 25.2 52 2.5 Australia Silverbrook Research
Alexander Reznicek [23] 1302 795 61.1% 2006—2026 19.9 65 3.9 USA IBM
Suckchel Yang [24] 1296 844 65.1% 2013—2026 12.7 102 4.7 South Korea LG
Satoshi Seo [25] 1273 603 47.4% 2002—2026 23.3 55 4.1 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Juan Montojo [26] 1272 1034 81.3% 2004—2026 22.1 58 6.9 USA Qualcomm
Ruilong Xie [27] 1257 984 78.3% 2013—2026 13.1 96 4.2 USA IBM
Clarence T. Tegreene [28] 1251 904 72.3% 2000—2025 24.8 50 10.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Takahiro Nishi [29] 1206 394 32.7% 2001—2026 24.5 49 6.3 Japan Panasonic
Jason L. Harris [30] 1202 668 55.6% 2011—2026 15.2 79 6.0 USA Ethicon
Kijun Kim [31] 1184 823 69.5% 2013—2026 12.2 97 4.6 South Korea LG
Joonkui Ahn [32] 1178 765 64.9% 2013—2026 12.7 93 4.7 South Korea LG
Marta Karczewicz [33] 1173 967 82.4% 2000—2026 25.2 47 4.0 USA Qualcomm
Yan Zhou [34] 1158 1022 88.3% 2012—2026 13.5 86 4.4 USA Qualcomm
Tingfang Ji [35] 1122 830 74.0% 2006—2026 19.6 57 6.9 USA Qualcomm
Edward K. Y. Jung [36] 1111 794 71.5% 1996—2022 26.1 43 8.0 USA Intellectual Ventures
Leonard Forbes [37] 1109 411 37.1% 1975—2019 43.3 26 2.6 USA Micron
Seungmin Lee [38] 1099 831 75.6% 2014—2026 11.4 96 3.5 South Korea LG
Thomas Edison [39] 1084 NA NA 1869—1933 63.9 17 1.0 USA Thomas Edison
Jason K. Resch [40] 1066 515 48.3% 2009—2026 16.6 64 4.2 USA IBM
Rick Allen Hamilton II [41] 1064 715 67.2% 1999—2025 26.5 40 4.2 USA IBM
Hao Xu [42] 1062 788 74.2% 2005—2026 20.9 51 4.7 China Qualcomm
Ahmadreza Rofougaran [43] 1005 484 48.2% 2002—2026 23.7 42 6.4 USA Broadcom
Donald E. Weder [44] 1000 395 39.5% 1978—2015 37.1 27 1.1 USA Weder Family Trust
Michael J. Sullivan [45] 997 534 53.6% 1989—2024 34.5 29 3.8 USA Acushnet Holdings
George Albert Lyon [46] 993 NA NA 1901—1965 64.5 15 1.0 Canada Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare [47] 993 640 64.5% 1992—2023 30.5 33 9.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Justin T. Mason [48] 990 986 99.6% 2008—2026 17.3 57 1.0 USA MS Technologies
Jay S. Walker [49] 980 422 43.1% 1998—2024 26.3 37 5.2 USA Walker Digital
Satoshi Nagata [50] 954 917 96.1% 2011—2026 14.4 66 4.0 Japan NTT
Hajime Kimura [51] 950 303 31.9% 2002—2026 23.2 41 2.6 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
John F. O'Connor [52] 949 NA NA 1901—1935 33.9 28 NA USA William H. Miner
Kyungmin Park [53] 949 449 47.3% 2014—2026 11.9 80 5.2 USA Ofinno
William H. Eby [54] 933 929 99.6% 1994—2025 31.6 30 1.2 USA Monsanto
David R. Hall [55] 927 766 82.6% 1985—2026 40.7 23 3.8 USA Hall Labs
Melvin De Groote [56] 925 NA NA 1924—1966 41.8 22 NA USA Petrolite
Hongyuan Zhang [57] 914 495 54.2% 2009—2026 16.9 54 3.9 USA Marvell
Hua Zhou [58] 914 478 52.3% 2012—2026 14.1 65 5.5 USA Ofinno
Nathan Myhrvold [59] 908 614 67.6% 1994—2025 31 29 11.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Francis H. Richards [60] 894 NA NA 1899—1930 30.8 29 NA USA Francis H. Richards
Stuart C. Salter [61] 892 838 93.9% 2009—2026 16.2 55 4.8 USA Ford
Chih-Chao Yang [62] 889 571 64.2% 2003—2026 22.2 40 3.4 USA IBM
Mark Malamud [63] 886 690 77.9% 1997—2022 25.1 35 7.5 USA Intellectual Ventures
Robert W. Lord [64] 869 683 78.6% 2003—2025 21.6 40 7.6 USA Intellectual Ventures
Hsien-Wei Chen [65] 864 397 45.9% 2005—2026 20.9 41 3.5 Taiwan TSMC
Royce A. Levien [66] 855 666 77.9% 1997—2020 23.4 37 6.8 USA Intellectual Ventures
Lee D. Whetsel [67] 851 128 15.0% 1991—2017 26.4 32 1.1 USA Texas Instruments
Youngdae Lee [68] 850 672 79.1% 2014—2026 11.9 71 3.1 South Korea LG
Muriel Y. Ishikawa [69] 840 560 66.7% 2002—2023 21.2 40 11.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Michael K. Gschwind [70] 836 442 52.9% 2001—2021 20.6 41 2.6 USA IBM
Clifford A. Pickover [71] 836 548 65.6% 1992—2024 32.2 26 3.9 USA IBM
SungDuck Chun [72] 834 520 62.4% 2007—2026 18.3 46 3.8 South Korea LG
Devendra K. Sadana [73] 828 470 56.8% 1983—2025 42.6 19 4.3 USA IBM
Xue Dong [74] 806 779 96.7% 2010—2026 15.1 53 7.4 China BOE
Salman A. Akram [75] 789 294 37.3% 1995—2026 30.7 26 2.9 USA Micron
Frederick A. Ware [76] 784 232 29.6% 1981—2025 43.9 18 2.8 USA Rambus
Warren M. Farnworth [77] 774 289 37.3% 1990—2014 24.4 32 2.8 USA Micron
James A. Jorasch [78] 774 309 39.9% 1994—2023 29 27 3.9 USA Walker Digital
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur [79] 768 625 81.4% 2006—2026 19.9 39 2.6 France Cisco Systems
Bruce B. Doris [80] 767 435 56.7% 1995—2025 30.3 25 4.2 USA IBM
Shougo Sato [81] 765 292 38.2% 1992—2025 33 23 1.8 Japan Brother
Toshiyasu Sugio [82] 765 282 36.9% 2009—2026 16.5 46 4.9 Japan Panasonic
Ali Khakifirooz [83] 759 415 54.7% 2011—2026 14.4 53 4.2 USA IBM
Jeyhan Karaoguz [84] 757 371 49.0% 1996—2020 23.8 32 4.6 USA Broadcom
Carleton Ellis [85] 753 NA NA 1902—1946 43.1 17 NA USA Ellis Foster Co
Chung-Shi Liu [86] 750 395 52.7% 2000—2026 26.2 29 6.1 Taiwan TSMC
Hyoungsuk Jeon [87] 749 357 47.7% 2009—2026 16.3 46 5.6 USA Ofinno
Jonghyun Park [88] 742 529 71.3% 2013—2026 13.1 57 3.8 USA LG
John M. Santosuosso [89] 738 466 63.1% 2001—2022 20.7 36 3.9 USA IBM
Hideo Ando [90] 733 123 16.8% 1983—2020 36.7 20 3.1 Japan Toshiba
Lisa Seacat DeLuca [91] 725 529 73.0% 2009—2026 17.1 42 2.7 USA IBM
George Spector [92] 723 723 100% 1974—1998 24.6 29 2.1 USA George Spector
Gregory J. Boss [93] 720 496 68.9% 2008—2026 17.9 40 4.2 USA IBM
Woosuk Ko [94] 720 317 44.0% 2015—2026 10.9 66 3.4 South Korea LG
Austin L. Gurney [95] 718 182 25.3% 1999—2021 21.6 33 2.9 USA Genentech
Xiaochuan Chen [96] 707 684 96.7% 2014—2026 11.6 61 7.0 China BOE
Tetsujiro Kondo [97] 700 528 75.4% 1987—2021 34 21 3.8 Japan Sony
Aleksandar Damnjanovic [98] 699 512 73.2% 2003—2026 22.6 31 4.4 USA Qualcomm
Moon-il Lee [99] 697 379 54.4% 2010—2026 15.3 46 5.3 USA LG
Elihu Thomson [100] 696 NA NA 1899—1935 35.9 19 NA USA GE
Eric C. Leuthardt [101] 695 467 67.2% 2006—2026 19.2 36 9.1 USA Intellectual Ventures

This table is usually updated every Tuesday, and is current as of March 24, 2026.

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 [Fams column divided by Pats column, rounded to first decimal as a percentage]. "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 [Pats column divided by Yrs column, rounded].
  • 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.[Info 1] 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

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