State & City Patent Statistics Table & Map

The nonprofit State Science and Technology Institute has taken raw data from the USPTO and compiled it into a statistical table that indicates number of patents issued per 100,000 employees by state for FY 2003-2007. The USPTO bases the state of origin of a patent on the resident of the first-named inventor.

Notable trends for this time period include:

• In 2007 the top five states for number of patents issued per 100,000 employees were: Idaho (210.1), Vermont (179.9), California (144.5), Washington (133.1), and Oregon (132.1)
  
• In 2007 the five states/district with the lowest number of patents issued per 100,000 employees were: Alaska (7.7) , District of Columbia (10.5), Hawaii (13.1), Arkansas (14.4), and Louisiana (15.7).
  
• Only seven states and the District of Columbia increased the number of patents per employee: Washington (40.3%), North Dakota (36.5%), D.C. (36.3%), Rhode Island (15.1%), Vermont (13.7%), Oregon (10.6%), Kansas (0.8%), and Nebraska (0.6%).
  
• Texas has consistently ranked 19th or 20th in the number of patents issued per 100,000 employees.

If you'd something more exciting than a table, FreePatentsOnline has come up with an inventive way to display geographic inventor data by creating a Google maps mash-up. Starting with their map of the U.S., click on a state, then a city, then a number (number of patent applications from that area) to see a list of recent patent application numbers and titles contained in their database. You can also use the application numbers to do a "Publication Number Search" in the USPTO applications (AppFT) database.