Talk:List of prolific inventors/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Prolific inventors article

I started this article as there was no up-to-date information available anywhere I could find on this topic. The four main lists that I found were an article in Popular Science (January 1936), and article on the top ten living US patent holders in USA Today (and later revised in Portfolio magazine in 2007), and a 2000 article in Time magazine on the top 5 inventors. The USA Today and Portfolio articles did not include historical prolific inventors such as Thomas Edison. (a significant oversight!), and the Time article did not include inventors who have recently surpassed Edison in terms of the number of patents. I had intended a succinct article with just the list of the top ten prolific inventors in history, but this attracted "globalize" and "original research" tags, so I thought it necessary to show that the information was not original, but was the combination of several published lists. All of the patent numbers are verifiable using the links provided.

Another feature that could be added to this article is the distinction between Utility patents and Design patents. (Done)

The patent numbers of the active inventors may change on Monday nights, when the USPTO publishes new patents. I will endeavor to update the list on a regular basis. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 13:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.176.134.211 (talk) 05:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Saw a recent blog posting that lists the most prolific (utility) inventor in each state

Will be great if a biography of each of these prolific inventors can be further researched/expanded further. FinanceguruCLT (talk) 20:11, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

That site is currently a very inaccurate source as discussed elsewhere on this Talk page.

While biographies could not be added to this article due to format and Original Research reasons, you are encouraged to create Wikipedia articles for inventors that we can link to. The challenge will be prolific inventors may not meet Wikipedia's rules for noteworthiness and / or citations from reliable sources. Keithrwalker (talk) 00:56, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your response. I will attempt do a couple of biographies. FinanceguruCLT (talk) 00:30, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Design patents

This article is useful information as regards utility patents, but is flawed in omitting inventions of new, original designs for an article of manufacture. Design patents are, by law (35 USC §171), inventions.

The PTO itself says it succinctly on their patents pageUSTPO definition of patents, including design and plant patents, as being for inventions What is a patent?

A patent is an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.

There are three types of patents. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. Here is the process for obtaining a utility patent. Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture. Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant. Burdlaw (talk) 23:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)burdlaw

Your own reference 35 USC 171 provides an explicit distinction between patents for inventions and patents for design: "The provisions of this title relating to patents for inventions shall apply to patents for designs, except as otherwise provided. " My humble interpretation of it is that "patents for design" are different from "patents of inventions" (which is, BTW, very consistent with the rest of Wikipedia on this subject). Ipsign (talk) 06:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Whether "Design patents are, by law, inventions" is not relevant. This is not an issue of some legal definition of the word "inventor" in some USPTO regulations. Using the logic: "a new design is the invention of a design, therefore designers are inventors", inventors of new words are also inventors, and should be included in List of prolific inventors. Lewis Carroll invented 28 new words in "Jabberwocky" alone, and many others in other writings. However, Carroll would be far the most prolific inventor - a madman talking complete gibberish may invent thousands of words every day, and should be listed as the most prolific inventor. While this is reductio ad absurdum, it illustrates that this is clearly not what the Wikipedia readership would expect of this article.

Calling an industrial design right a design patent is US centric terminology. In many countries they are called registered designs. Wikipedia's own description (from the article Patent) is worth quoting:

"The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application. The additional qualification utility patent is used in the United States to distinguish it from other types of patents (e.g. design patents) but should not be confused with utility models granted by other countries. Examples of particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents.

Some other types of intellectual property rights are referred to as patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in some jurisdictions (they protect the visual design of objects that are not purely utilitarian), plant breeders' rights are sometimes called plant patents, and utility models or Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents. This article relates primarily to the patent for an invention, although so-called petty patents and utility models may also be granted for inventions."

Just as the Wikipedia article Patent relates primarily to patents for inventions, List of prolific inventors relates primarily to inventors of patents for inventions. Design patents, plant patents, and patents pending are included in the numbers in the "Total, INPADOC" column. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 10:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Globalization

I have been tasked with 'Globalizing' this article, which may be a little tricky - any advice greatfully received!

The most common inventor on a European Patent Office search on Boliven is "Die Erfindernennung Liegt Noch Nicht Vor". This didn't seem to be a very likely name, so I used Google to translate this "name" into English. The result:"The inventor is still not available", which, I expect, is a pretty good translation! This search included applications as well as granted patents, and this particular inventor did not appear on granted patents, so I am being a little unfair! However, it shows that a database search is perhaps not as easy as one would like it to be.

The problem in Japan seems more severe. There are a massive number of 'patents' is Japan, but they are mostly not for what is normally called 'inventions'. The most prolific filer of these patents in Japan (according to a Boliven ranking) is Ugawa Shohachi, with 'inventions' seemingly exclusively related to Pachinko machines manufactured by Sankyo. These inventions are things such as color coded ball trays and patterns of pins for the balls to bounce off. While it is a bit far fetched to call these 'inventions', the real problem is that this lists applications, not granted patents. As the article is about prolific inventors, it is inapprpriate to include either:

• Designs
• Patent applications. The patent office decides whether something is an invention or not - anyone can file anything as an application for a patent. As as result, I have only included granted patents in this list.

I have included an international section. So far, this only includes Japanese, Korean, European, and US patents. I will expand this as I find appropriate sources. As the "globalization" of this article to major international patent countries did not alter the ranking or prolific inventors, I took the liberty of removing the {{globalize}} tag. (Edcollins, if you disagree, please let me know what extra I should do)

AlexBartlett4 (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I added INPADOC and PCT patent counts to the main table. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

To further internationalize, I changed the main tables to concentrate on granted utility Patent families rather than granted US utility patents. In most cases, this is the same, as the highest number of patents is in the US. There are exceptions, though, such as Béla Barényi, who has more patents in Germany than the U.S. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 00:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to remove INPADOC data A proposal by Keithrwalker (talk) 16:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Having maintained the data for this article for many years, I have come to realize that the effort to meet a globalization goal have not been met through INPADOC, and in fact INPADOC reduces article quality for the following reasons:

1. The data is stale because the host, ESPACNET, started blocking automated data pulls and what they consider excessive queries, both of which are necessary to practically maintain the page. They allow registration for an ID that can be used for this purpose, but the queries require learning a specialized syntax and using a different method than I use. I'm unwilling to invest time sorting this out since I pull data and produce the wiki code using simple web queries via a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with macros.
2. The database has a 10,000 patent family limit, and so it is impossible to get a count for the most prolific inventors.
3. The database has inexplicable record loss. For example, one week an inventor may have 1,000, but the next week only 900 using the same query.
4. The database cannot be reliably queried by inventor. For example, searching for inventor "John Smith" will return not only John Smith's patent families, but also those that have any combination of inventors that include a John and a Smith in their names, such as John Doe and Jane Smith.

The globalization goal is already met by adding counts outside of the USPTO database to the USPTO column, such as is the case for Béla Barényi. So I will use that method going forward and rely on others updating the article with references to their sources (or they can update this Talk page), and of course inspect the references to ensure there are no double count errors. I use a similar approach for inventors who have patents prior to 1976, which cannot be queried from the USPTO database, such as for Shunpei Yamazaki. I will update the article to make clear the limitations of the article and the use of sources. It needs to be clear that it is impossible to get a perfect count for prolific inventors due to record-keeping, inventions that are never patented, and disagreements about valid patents.

Before I implement this change, I welcome any comments below, and of course will welcome edits to the main article should I proceed with the change.

Comments about the Proposal to remove INPADOC data

Please add any comments here.

Carleton Ellis

I have just encountered the article on Carleton Ellis which claims he was the holder of 753 patents, which would put him on the top ten list. However, the article is not clear that they are 753 US patents. If 753 is the sum of all patents filed internationally, then it is not a comparable number, as the same invention would be counted many times. As all of his patents predate 1976, a USPTO search doesn't retrieve any. Does anyone know the true number? AlexBartlett4 (talk) 12:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC) After finding a Popular Science article from 1936 on the most prolific living inventors of the time, I included Carleton Ellis.

Yoshiro Nakamatsu

I am trying to track down the patents of Yoshiro Nakamatsu, aka Dr. Nakamats. He claims to have over 3000 patents, and appears to be somewhat of a (controversial) celebrity in Japan. He also claims to have invented many things which he clearly did not invent. A search of the USPTO website gives only six patents, but there may be many more patents issued before 1976. If his claim of 3000 patents is true, it would likely be for a total of worldwide patents, and almost certainly mostly Japanese patents. Even more likely, this would refer to Japanese patent applications, as in Japan a patent can be filed without being examined. It is published after 18 months, and then is "laid open" for up to 7 years before the inventor elects whether to pay for examination. Does anyone know a source of some reliable information on Nakamatsu's patents? AlexBartlett4 (talk) 06:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I get 107 Japanese patents for the name "Nakamatsu Yoshiro" but I am not sure how many of these are referring to the same Dr. Nakamats: http://www.ipexl.com/share/83c1c51c8ba2df839381710a58710236. More notably, there are hardly any citations from US patents on these. He has only been cited a total of 7 times. Not much for a 'prolific' inventor. markashworth (talk) 15:36, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Nakamatsu's claim is false on two counts: Nakamatsu does not have 3,200 patents, and even if he did, he would still not be the most prolific inventor in history. Nakamatsu has been granted just 14 U.S. patents. Even when counting all international patents and patent applications, Nakamatsu does not approach his claimed patent count. A search on the International Patent Document database (INPADOC), reveals that Nakamatsu has a total of 395 worldwide patents or patent applications. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 12:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Reply to AlexBartlett: If this 395 total is to be believed, he would still be on the list of prolific inventors. However, it seems that no reliable, conclusive data can be found. I suggest that a note be added somewhere on the article explaining this. Hazard Gamer (talk) 20:27, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Reply to Hazard Gamer: A note on the article is not warranted in this case. 395 includes patent applications, which we do not count -- only when it issues do we consider it an invention. To get Nakamatsu's count, search Japan's patent repository, which shows only 93 patents issued. Steps to search:

1. Browse to https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/
2. Site is in Japanese. If you need English, there is an English link at top right of the page
3. From the Patents/Utility Models blue menu bar select Patent/Utility Model Search
4. In the Search keywords section, select a Search item of "Organization of applicant/right holder/author" and give this keyword including the single quotes: 'NAKAMATSU YOSHIRO'
5. In the Search options section just above the Search button, click its Open button
6. Select Filter items by registration date, which will limit results to patents issued
7. Click the Search button
8. The patent count is displayed in the tab header for Domestic Documents

Keithrwalker (talk) 22:35, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Article Title

The original title of this article was "Prolific inventors". This was improved to "List of prolific inventors", certainly more accurate, and that is the current title. The title was then further changed to "List of prolific individual patent grantees" by Reboot with the explanation "moved List of prolific inventors to List of prolific individual patent grantees: the number of patents issued and the number of inventions do not correlate very strongly. The title is misleading at best and forcing a POV at worst". This is actually incorrect. The number of patents and the number of inventions correlate very strongly, if one uses the actual definition of inventions and patents. What does not correlate strongly is the public's perception of what an invention is, and the real definition of an invention. The general public often associates an 'invention' with a 'product', as if there were a one-to-one correlation. However, some products are the accumulation of tens of thousands of inventions - a smartphone is a good example, where there would be tens of thousands of inventions relating to the CMOS chips used, many thousands more relating to the ways of manufacturing these, thousands more relating to the GaAs chips used for the radio circuits, thousands for the processor architecture, thousands for the Flash memory, thousands for the WiFi and cellular radio circuits, tens of thousands for the LCD screen, and thousands for the software. Various other products involve no recorded inventions, as the product may have essentially been invented in prehistory, with no patentable improvements being made since then. In other cases, there may be a wide range of products, all based on one single invention. As a trivial example, a product (for example, a shoe) produced in a range different styles, colors, patterns and sizes is a range of separate products, but usually these would not rate as separate inventions. Each shoe, however, may incorporate a number of inventions. Nike, for example, has a total of 2213 U.S. shoe patents (as at 30 March 2010). Of these, 263 are utility patents, 1949 are design patents, and 1 is a reissue patent. Products that only differ from the prior art in their design are eligible for design patents. Designers are very valuable to society, but a designer is not the same as an inventor. This is why I have ranked the inventors according to utility patents - patents for inventions.

The general view is that the number of utility patents is the only available objective measure of a prolific inventor. For all of the 20th century, Thomas Edison was considered to be the most prolific inventor in history, in part because he had the most patents. While he was granted 1084 U.S. utility patents, these related to a dozen or so products. For example, he was granted over 200 patents on the incandescent light bulb, a very simple product involving a glass envelope evacuated of air, with a carbon filament in it (incidentally, Edison did not invent any of the glass bulb, evacuation, or carbon filament aspects of light bulbs - his inventions were in the details of these aspects). The public may generally consider the incandescent light bulb to be one single invention, but again, that is because the public conception of an invention is not the same as the actual definition of an invention. The Wikipedia definition is "An invention is a new composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived in which case it may be a radical breakthrough."

Some may think that Edison's light bulb is a classic case of an "independently conceived radical breakthrough". This is not the case. The basic concept of an incandescent light bulb was made Sir Humphry Davy in 1802. Many subsequent inventors improved Davy's invention prior to the successful commercialization of electric lighting by Thomas Edison in 1880, 78 years later. There are many other inventors listed in the brief history of the light bulb given in Wikipedia's article on the incandescent light bulb. Edison's two hundred inventions on the light bulb combined with his other inventions on electricity generation, batteries, and distribution to make the first commercialized electric lighting system. It was not 'radical breakthroughs on the part of Edison. Although Edison had few "independently conceived radical breakthroughs", I think that few people would deny that Edison was a prolific inventor, based on the number of U.S. patents he was awarded. Also from Wikipedia's invention article: "An invention that is novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field may be able to obtain the legal protection of a patent." There is no tally or record of inventions other than those at the patent offices. There are many, many inventions made that are not novel - that is, they are re-invented, as the inventor did not have knowledge of the original invention. However, a prolific 're-inventor' hardly tallies with the public perception of a 'prolific inventor'. Also, a prolific inventor of inventions that are obvious does not inspire the public to think that they are a 'prolific inventor'. So in these two aspects, the USPTO definition of a patentable invention actually correlates more strongly with the public perception of an invention than does the actual definition of invention (which does not require novelty or non-obviousness). All of this combines to mean that U.S. Uutility patents are our best available measure of inventions, and correlates reasonably well with the public's idea of prolific inventors. The article already contains a discussion on the significance or otherwise of inventions. Perhaps this section should be expanded to cover any misconceptions. Note that this is not just my opinion. Lists that I've managed to find and reference in the article talk about prolific inventors, rather than 'individual prolific patent assignees'. For example:

In January 1936, Popular Science Magazine published a list of the "most prolific living inventors to be found in America today"

On December 4, 2000, Time Magazine published a list of the "top five inventors".

On October 15, 2007 Condé Nast Portfolio Magazine published a list of "the world's most prolific inventors alive"

The proposed new title "List of prolific individual patent grantees" may be technically accurate, but is no more accurate than the previous title, and is overly pedantic and obscure. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 02:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Reboot's proposed rename is nonsense at best, and is closer to anti-patent POV propaganda. He's also attempted to push his POV in articles on individual inventors. — Aldaron • T/C 04:34, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

List limited to US patents - other inventors with >1000 patents are not listed

This list is misleading as it does not rank the most prolific inventors, but those with the most U.S. utility patents. Two very different things! For example, Béla Barényi is not even listed although he had over 2,500 patents (mostly in the auto industry): http://www.dpma.de/ponline/erfindergalerie/e_bio_barenyi.html Quiname (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing Barényi to my attention. I have used granted U.S. utility patents as a proxy for worldwide granted utility patent families. There are several reasons for this:

• It is inappropriate to use the total worldwide number of patents, as patents are national only - there is no world patent. To obtain patent coverage in more than one country, a patent for the same invention must be filed in each country of interest. PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) patents are not worldwide patents - the patent must still be granted by each national office.
• Design patents should not be included, as they are patents for designs, not inventions. Likewise, reissue patents and plant patents should not be included.
• Only granted patents are included, not patent applications (patents pending). Until a patent is granted by the appropriate patent office it is not known that the patent is actually novel, or patentable.

However, you have a very good point - being ranked on U.S. patents gives an undue U.S. perspective to the list. What is the answer to this? I think, to rank on Patent families. A patent family is a set of patents taken in various countries to protect a single invention. So, the question becomes, how to determine the number of patent families? As the number of patent families must be equal or greater than the maximum number of patents in any one country, then the minimum number of patent families will be the largest patent count in single country. This will often be the number of US patents, but it will not always be. Béla Barényi is a case in point, as he has more German patents than U.S. patents. There are also some Chinese inventors who are rapidly advancing in patent count, and who typically have more Chinese patents than US patents. I shall adapt the list to be ranked by granted utility patent families rather than granted U.S. utility patents. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 05:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Béla Barényi > 2500 patents

When Béla Barényi retired on 31. Dezember 1972, he already had more than 2000 patents, twice as many as Thomas Edison (in 2009 Barényi had over 2500). So the article's claim is not true that "For all of the 20th century, Thomas Edison was the most prolific inventor in history." I do not know when exactly Béla Barényi surpassed Edison, but it seems likely that Barényi was the most prolific inventor for most of the 20th century. Quiname (talk) 20:39, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The patent count for Barényi is for worldwide patents. This is not equal to the number of inventions, as each separate invention must be filed as a separate patent in each country for which patent protection is sought. As Barényi was European, and worked for Daimler-Benz, many more patents for his his inventions were filed in various European countries than is typical for most inventors. From INPADOC[31] the number of patents that Barényi has in various countries is as follows:

• Germany: 595
• France: 334
• USA: 178
• Austria: 80
• Switzerland: 39
• United Kingdom: 10
• Other: 2

INPADOC makes an attempt to list each patent family once only. However, small variations in a patent name or filing sequence can cause patent families to be listed more than once, so INPADOC's count of 1,238 likely corresponds to the 2500 total quoted for individual patents. In any case, the 595 granted patents in Germany certainly must be separate inventions. With at least 595 patent families, Barényi should certainly be on the list. I will add him at the appropriate ranking.

The statement regarding Edison being the most prolific inventor for all of the 20th century still stands: Edison had 1084 separate inventions (and 2332 worldwide patents) versus 595 separate inventions for Barényi. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 05:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Misleading Statement about Edison

The opening statement is flawed in many ways: "For all of the 20th century, Thomas Edison was the most prolific inventor in history, with 1084 U.S. utility patents."

1. To claim that someone is the "most prolific inventor in history" based on his number of U.S. utility patents is ridiculous, as this automatically excludes all those who invented things before the age of U.S. utility patents, or those who used foreign patent systems.

I had already changed it from ranking by U.S. to ranking by (international) patent families. However, for the top ten list, these two numbers are the same, as they all have more utility patents in the US than any other country. Some inventors, such as Béla Barényi have more patent families than they have patents in the U.S. The list now reflects that. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 01:58, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

2. It is well-known that most of Edison's patents were not invented by Edison himself but by members of his large lab; Edison just was the one who put his name on the patents. One could rightly claim that for a long time Edison was the man with the most U.S. utility patents, but this does not automatically make him "the most prolific inventor".

3. A comparatively minor syntax issue: in the early century he had fewer than 1084 U.S. utility patents, while the sentence says otherwise.

To fix this, one could write: "Throughout the 20th century, Thomas Edison held more U.S. utility patents than anybody else; his final count was 1084."

Quiname (talk) 18:35, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Just for reference, Edison had 736 U.S. patents at the beginning of the 20th century. However, I think it would be pedantic to include this fact - your wording is accurate and sufficient. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 01:58, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

There are some strong arguments out there that Edison effectively stole some ideas from various other inventors, not all of whom worked in his lab. As one example, Tesla apparently said that Edison never compensated him for patents claimed on 25 of his inventions*. Given what (limited) research I have done, I feel like the opening statements are somewhat misleading. Edison was an astute businessman, no doubt. He seems to have helped pioneer the concept of intellectual property rights. But a most prolific "inventor"? One could argue that a more appropriate term would be "plagiarist".

• Citation: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Thomas-Edison-stole-ideas-from-others-especially-Nikola-Tesla-If-yes-is-there-any-proof-of-that Crazfulla (talk) 06:42, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Article is full of Original Research

The article says: "While the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the primary source for U.S. patent information, only patents issued since 1976 can be electronically searched by the inventor's name at the USPTO website.[52] For some of the listed inventors, such as Thomas Edison, all of their patents predate 1976, so other sources must be used. For some inventors, such as Shunpei Yamazaki, some patents predate 1976. The earlier patents must be added to the results of a USPTO search to obtain the complete number."

It seems clear that all of this involved Original Research which is prohibited by Wikipedia - probably the entire article must be deleted, or at least substantially rewritten. Quiname (talk) 18:54, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I concur (it is WP:SYN which is kind of WP:OR) Ipsign (talk) 13:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Please see reply below regarding WP:SYN AlexBartlett4 (talk) 20:35, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The article is not Original Research. The list is the concatenation of the five published lists that are included in the article. The patent numbers are then updated on a (semi-regular) basis by reference to other published data - that is, the patents published by the appropriate official government patent offices, such as the USPTO. As these patent offices effectively define what a patent is, there can be no more reliable reference. The note quoted above is just a precaution to those who might rely on an electronic search of the USPTO records, and an explanation of why the references add extra patents to those found in searches of a few of the listed inventors whose inventing careers span 1976. While the USPTO records are essentially complete, they are not electronically searchable searchable by name before 1976. This is why you must add 56 patents to the USPTO search results for Shunpei Yamazaki. These 56 are in the USPTO records, but simply don't show up in an electronic search. Likewise, the patents of Thomas Edison don't show up in an electronic search, but there are plenty of other references to these, as entire volumes have been published on them. I used the convenient Wikipedia List of Edison patents which lists them all, though there are is no shortage of other references to the number of Edison patents. Many of these sources quote 1093 as the number of patents. However, 9 of these 1093 patents are design patents, so are not patents for inventions. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 01:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

90% of the current article clearly qualifies as WP:SYN which is a kind of WP:OR, and is prohibited. Creating a ranked list on your own is obvious WP:SYN. The only way I can see to avoid AfD for this article is to remove everything, except for already published lists (and tiny bit of explanation, though even with this you should be very cautious). BTW, personally I admire your efforts, and if you could publish it somewhere, wouldn't object to include reference to your research to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is not the right place of doing the research itself :-(. Ipsign (talk) 13:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

My reading of WP:SYN is that it prohibits the combination of material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not implicitly stated in the sources. It does not say that editors should not create simple ranked lists of well-referenced data. The creation of ranked lists has been a staple of encyclopedias for centuries - Britannica certainly had them, and the World Book encyclopedia was replete with them. Wikipedia is also. There are many ranked lists which are collated, ranked, and updated within Wikipedia, based on individually sourced data.

Type in "list of largest...", "list of longest..." or similar into the Wikipedia search field, and many will pop up. The first "list of largest" is List of largest power stations in the world, a well researched and up-to-date article which contains 18 ranked lists which are not published elsewhere. Virtually all of the 111 references are to individual articles about specific power stations. An exception is reference 19: "Top 100 largest power stations (retrieved 2010-08-31)" published by industcards.com. Comparing the top 10 of this published industcards list with the top 10 in List of largest power stations in the world, there are significant differences. The rankings of numbers 4 and 5 are reversed, and No 7 (Sayana-Shushenskaya) and No 10 (Futtsu) of the industcards list do not appear in the Wikipedia list. This is because a power plant must be at least 6,000 MW to be included in Wikipedia's top 10 list - Futtsu is 4,534 MW, and Sayana-Shushenskaya, a Russian hydroelectric plant which had ten 640 MW generators, suffered a major accident in 2009 destroying much of its capacity, and is only partly rebuilt, so is currently less than 6,000 MW. Wikipedia's no 9 - Ulchin in Korea, appears as No 14 in the industcards list. Some of the references are to national lists of power stations, which have been collated and ranked in the Wikipedia article. It would appear likely that the Wikipedia list is the most accurate and up-to-date published list available.

To check whether List of largest power stations in the world was just an aberration, I looked further down the set of lists titled: "list of largest...":

List of largest monoliths in the world is a similar collation of data

List of largest California cities by population is based on 2010 US census data, and involved no collation

List of largest buildings in the world is a collation

List of largest optical reflecting telescopes is a collation

List of largest empires is a collation

List of largest enclosed shopping malls in Canada is a collation

This cursory look was certainly not exhaustive, but indicated that it was likely that most ranked lists in Wikipedia are collations of other lists and individual data points.

I think these lists are very useful, and are a significant part of Wikipedia. I certainly use them all the time, and have no objection to the fact that Wikipedia's list is typically more accurate and up-to-date than any other source. I strongly believe that Wikipedia should be allowed to have the most accurate lists that can be created, and not be restricted to slavishly republishing existing lists, even when those lists contain known errors and omissions, or are simply out of date.

Nonetheless, I shall do my best to improve the article with your comments in mind, and shall be vigilant about excluding any WP:SYN or other WP:OR. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 20:35, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, it is much better now; I am not sure whether remaining lists are WP:SYN or not, so I won't argue (as long as you don't introduce ranking into them - which would be promoting a point which wasn't made by original sources, making them WP:SYN). I will also perform further minor clean-up. Ipsign (talk) 06:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I am afraid the first table is pure original research. It cannot stay in the article. Querying specific databases based on specific spellings (of inventor's names) directly results from your personal choices and your original research. --Edcolins (talk) 22:06, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

When I first read WP:NOR I assumed that it's purpose was to prevent Wikipedia being used to publish crackpot theories, scuttlebutt, or politically motivated rants. Here is the first paragraph of Wikipedia's prohibition on original research:

Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources. To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material as presented.

The article: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not contains the following: "Per our policy on original research, please do not use Wikipedia for any of the following:

1. Primary (original) research, such as proposing theories and solutions, original ideas, defining terms, coining new words, etc. ...(continues)"

List of prolific inventors is just a list. I don't see how it proposes a theory or solution, has any original ideas, defines any terms, or coins any new words.

I did put quite a bit of effort in to "fact check" every entry in the table. All of the names initially came from published lists (which were all included in the article, though some have since been deleted). As the patent numbers are slowly and constantly changing, I periodically update the patent numbers using searches at the two most reliable publicly available sources that I am aware of - the USPTO database (surely the source of sources for US patents) and Inpadoc the international patent document database established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and maintained by the European Patent Office (EPO). Surely, as the official government patent databases, these count as reliable, published sources.

Given that the sources are probably acceptable, there is the issue of "Querying specific databases based on specific spellings (of inventor's names)". In the database queries, I have consistently used used the form: ("Lastname, Firstname" or "Firstname, Lastname"). Although the USPTO uses "Lastname, Firstname" there is a small percentage of errors (substantially below 1%) where the names have been accidentally reversed at the USPTO, and the patents are therefore filed incorrectly. I include this reversal in the search. I have checked for spelling variations, and in general, they represent a small error at the USPTO. For example, "Silverbrook" appears in around twenty variations - Sliverbrook, Silverbook, Siverbrook, etc. However, as there are no more than one or two patents under each variation, I thought that these misspellings did not materially alter the relative patent counts. The exception to this is for "Shunpei Yamazaki", where I also include the alternative transliteration of "Shumpei Yamazaki". Yamazaki has 20 patents at the USPTO listed under "Shumpei".

I have done quite extensive checking to ensure that the inventions listed under a particular name are actually by the one inventor, and not by two or more inventors of the same name. In September 2011 I cleaned up the list, as there were 6 entries that were, in fact, by multiple people of the same name. These are listed in the section below: "Common names". I deleted these, as the most prolific of any of the people with the same name did not reach the cut-off for the "top 40" list. I am certain that all of the people that remain in the list now are individuals. Now, this may have been "original research" - but I actually think of it as being "fact checking".

Alternatively, if it really is "original research", maybe there are kinds of original research that Wikipedia really should allow. I note that Wikipedia has a policy Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. There is a nice quote on the page Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means:

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.

— Robert Bringhurst

Inventions and patents are an area that is not well reported in the media. Normally, Time Magazine would be considered a good source to quote in Wikipedia. The article published on December 4, 2000, by Time - "Man-Made Marvels" - was a list of what Time claimed to be the "TOP FIVE INVENTORS":

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Thomas Edison	1,093
2	Melvin De Groote	925
3	Francis H. Richards	894
4	Elihu Thomson	696
5	Jerome Lemelson	554

As usual, this list used patent counts as the metric for determining the top five inventors. However, the list omitted five inventors with more patents than the last inventor ion the list (Jerome Lemelson). When the Time article was published, George Albert Lyon had 993 U.S. patents, John F. O'Connor with 949 U.S. patents, Carleton Ellis had 753 U.S. patents, Shunpei Yamazaki had 745 U.S. patents, and Béla Barényi had 595 German patents. These errors are readily verifiable.

If Wikipedia is constrained to do no more than republish error filled and out-of-date articles that have appeared in other media, I think that would be a terrible shame. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 08:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

References

Two sections

The list is in two sections: the top ten, and the subsequent list which is effectively the top 50 (Inventors with more than 400 utility patent families worldwide). The lists are formed on the same basis, so the top ten list is really a subset of the top 50 list. The difference is the level of detail in each list - the first list has more detail (total patents of all types, dates, and areas of invention. I am trying to collect this information for the others in the list, but it can be hard to find (I recently added countries). When the second list has all of the details of the first list, then I propose that the lists be merged into a single list. In the meantime, if anyone has any such information, can you please add it below. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 02:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The two sections have now been merged into a single section, containing a "top 40" list. There were 46 in the previous second list, but some of these were deleted as they were actually a number of inventors with the same name, none of whom quite reached the 'Top 40" list (see below) AlexBartlett4 (talk) 08:11, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It is now no-longer a top 40 list, but a list of inventors with more than 400 patent families. Note that the cut-off of 400 is entirely arbitrary - I will try to extend it as I find more information. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 12:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion is now reduced to 300 patent families. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 04:04, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion will be reduced to 200 patent families once the INPADOC source feed is automated like the USPTO source feed. This will not add many inventors to the list. Keithrwalker (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

We might move the annual Top 10 lists to a different page or remove them because recent years are no longer published (at least I can't find them) and the Top 10 lists have not been entirely accurate. However, I would appreciate comment, especially from AlexBartlett or anyone who has used the article, as to whether this might reduce article value. For example, is there value in learning that a certain inventor had (or "might have had") the most patents issued in 2011? Keithrwalker (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion will be increased back to 300 patent families. 1) The USPTO site has become excessively slow in the last few weeks even outside of Tuesdays, which requires monitoring and manually restarting my weekly automation many times due to timeouts. 2) Reducing the threshold to 200 included more inventors over the last 7 years than I anticipated. 3) I found names of many more prolific inventors that will cause the list to grow even more. This is not sustainable. I will also implement the preceding focus proposal so the article will just be this one list of prolific inventors without the old static lists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keithrwalker (talk • contribs) 18:24, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Common names

I have been checking through the list to ensure that all of the patents attributed to a person are to the same person, that is, they are not to more than one person with the same name. Generally, the list has not had this problem, with the exception of some of the Japanese inventors. Certain personal names, such as Hiroshi and Takashi, are very common in Japan. Likewise, certain family names such as Tanaka, Suzuki, Inoue, and Sato are also very common.

• At least 20 different inventors with the name Takashi Suzuki were responsible for the 636 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 58.
• At least 25 different inventors with the name Hiroshi Suzuki were responsible for the 572 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 73.
• At least 20 different inventors with the name Hiroshi Tanaka were responsible for the 591 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 52.
• At least 25 different inventors with the name Hiroshi Watanabe were responsible for the 570 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 96.
• At least 20 different inventors with the name Hiroshi Sato were responsible for the 515 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 144.
• At least 20 different inventors with the name Hiroshi Inoue were responsible for the 491 patents listed - the highest number to any one inventor with this name was 108.

The other Japanese inventors in the list are individuals. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 03:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thomas J. Kennedy III

Section added by Keithrwalker (talk) 19:08, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

On February 2, 2016, Tjkennedy3 added inventor Thomas J. Kennedy to the article with an atypical USPTO query. Sometimes atypical complexity is required to ensure multiple inventors are not included in a single query. The query included a partial inventor name of kennedy$ (the $ is a wildcard that will pick up all generational suffixes, first names, middle names, and middle initials). The query also limited results to two cities, wilbraham and chicopee, so as not to return every Kennedy. Given the common name and how the USPTO search works, I investigated.

The USPTO query of an inventor name and city queries the entire inventor list field, and so a query of an inventor name and city will include results where the inventor's name is matched, but where the queried city matches a co-inventor of the patent and not the matched inventor. So if one queries for an inventor Kennedy from Wilbraham, one will inadvertently retrieve a patent that has an inventor Kennedy from Boston with a co-inventor Dave from Wilbraham. In fact, the query did just that, pulling in patent 5,915,453, which has an inventor named Paul Kennedy and a different inventor from Chicopee. By correcting the query, Thomas J. Kennedy III has 199 patents, which is at present below the 200 threshold. Therefore, Thomas J. Kennedy will be moved to the watch list until he is issued one more patent, which is likely to be soon.

I refined the query by making the inventor name more precise: (kennedy-thomas$ or kennedy-III-thomas$ or kennedy-II-thomas$). There is a single patent that incorrectly gives him a generational suffix of II. The inventor's city, assigned company, co-inventors, and technology all demonstrate this was a filing mistake and not a different inventor. Here is the correct URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&Query=apt%2F1+and+in%2F%28kennedy-thomas$+or+kennedy-III-thomas$+or+kennedy-II-thomas$%29+and+ic%2F%28wilbraham+or+chicopee%29

The refined query is still imperfect and will need to be watched. For example, Thomas J. Kennedy III might move to a different city or inadvertently be listed with an incorrect city name (which happens due to typos, use of a corporate headquarter city, or other filing mistake). Further, we have the potential, albeit reduced now, that there will be a Thomas Kennedy who is not this Thomas J. Kennedy III who is included purely because one of the inventors listed is from one of the queried cities. It is generally easy to spot such anomalies by investigating the subject matter, assigned company, and co-inventors.

Years

The headings for the first table are not defined. Updating Stanford Ovshinsky's entry (because of his death) led me to question the meaning of the "Years" column. Is this their lifetime, the first and last patent (application, grant, or ...?), or something else? Any of them, other than their lifetime, are pretty hard to verify/cite. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:37, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

• The definitions for the headings of the first table appear at the bottom of the table. If they were at the top, then the whole article would appear to be definitions of table headings to anyone with a relatively low-resolution screen. The heading "years" is defined as: "Years: These are the birth and death years of the inventor, where known." I was very sad to hear of Stanford Ovshinsky's death (from your update). He made some fantastic contributions. Alex Bartlett4a (talk) 05:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
• I propose changing the Lived column, which is almost always unknown, to the first and most recent years of patent issuance (labled Active), which is easy to determine except for those who pre-date digital records. Besides allowing a more complete representation, the years a person was active is more relevant for researching prolific inventor characteristics than the years they lived. This might give rise to interesting insight by readers, such as identifying averages and deviations in issuances per inventor per year. More importantly, it will give readers a better clue as to whether the inventor is likely to have many more issue. The column will be labled "Active" and be described as: The first and most recent year in which the inventor received a patent issuance. In cases where an inventor was active prior to digital records, the years lived may be substituted, in which case they will be signified with "(b)" for born and "(d)" for died: for example, 1882(b)-1944(d).Keithrwalker (talk) 22:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Question from ref desk

Your list of "List of prolific inventors", begins at 200 Patents. The USPTO Website shows I currently hold 205 US patents under my name; "Rankin, Jed". What do I need to do to get added to the list? Jedrankin (talk) 00:43, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Answer to Question from ref desk

I receive a lot of questions about how to get on the list if an inventor qualifies or why an inventor who qualifies is not on the list. The answer is there is no automated method I know of to determine when inventors qualify for inclusion. Therefore, if you are or know of an inventor who qualifies, might qualify, or will probably qualify in the next year or two, please let me know. Here are your four options.

• Edit this Talk page with the information and I will take action. All I need is inventor name. If you have other information that we include in the article, you can include that.
• Update my profile's Talk page with the information if you do not want to bring it to the attention of others who might follow this Talk page.
• If you have access to IBM's corporate directory, you can look me up, Keith Walker in Austin, and send an email. (It may seem strange to include this, but many qualifying inventors have IBM access. Disclaimer: I do not represent IBM when maintaining this article. I represent Wikipedia and its noble spirit of giving our planet Truth that is independent of any government, corporate, or personal agenda.)
• If the inventor definitely qualifies, as in you understand the rules of the article and know how to examine a USPTO (or other government) ref to make sure it only includes utility patents issued by that inventor and not another inventor with the same name, edit the article directly. There are one of three likely outcomes from this:

1. In most cases I edit anything that does not follow the article's rules. Very rarely do people submit a new inventor and follow the article's rules perfectly, and this is okay. I am even able to sometimes find a more accurate ref that includes more (ideally all) of the inventor's inventions.
2. In a small percentage of cases I will revert the edit because the reference appeared to be in error (or even malicious in cases of vandalism). When I do this, I include the reason why the inventor does not qualify in the edit summary and invite discussion on the Talk page because I could be wrong and need (and truly want) to be corrected.
3. On July 23, 2019 we had a case where an inventor seemed to add their own entry, as was evident by their Wikipedia user name closely matching the inventor's name (even though Wikipedia user names are unverified and can be intentionally or accidentally misleading). The inventor objectively qualified to be on the article, and yet someone reverted the edit claiming it was self-promotion. The inventor rightfully added their entry back in accordance with objective truth and in complete compliance with Wikipedia policy, and yet someone else reverted their edit with an accusation that they created the article for self-promotion. This article was not even created by that user! My theory is there is a bot that attempts to identify self-promotion that people are starting to use without any attempt to verify the bot's findings. If so, the bot is not appropriate for this article. The inventor indeed qualified and so I added him back. The bot, with user input, also left accusatory messages on this inventor's talk page, and so I posted a defense on behalf of the inventor.

--Keithrwalker (talk) 06:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Introduction

Hi there, just looking for thoughts on extending and slightly changing the introduction as I believe this does not address the article and what it is about. Any thoughts welcome. Willbb234 (talk) 14:34, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@Keithrwalker: pinging major contributor. Willbb234 (talk) 14:35, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Willbb234:, I agree and would actually like to delete the introduction and the various published lists. I think the section description above the table is a better intro to the article. What do you (or anyone else reading this) think? --Keithrwalker (talk) 17:06, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@Keithrwalker: I think the first paragraph is useful, just in the wrong place - could be switched with the first paragraph? I am happy to do the work once I get back from my holiday in a couple of days. Regards, Willbb234 (talk) 12:55, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Missing entry: Hui Zang

Hui Zang came to the #wikipedia-en-help ^connect IRC channel and stated that he holds more than 200 US patents, pointing to [32] and [33]. There's also Espacenet which seems rather full of false positives. I'm not familiar with this list's inclusion criteria and sourcing requirements and would leave it to others to update the list if appropriate. Huon (talk) 20:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for posting this, Huon! I will monitor Hui Zang and add to the article when Hui reaches 200 issued patents. Hui is indeed close to the required 200 with 194 at this time. The two USPTO references include overlap due to the Intellectual Property relationship between IBM and Globalfoundries where some patents list both as assignee. This ref removes the overlap and includes a few cases where Globalfoundries was incorrectly filed as Global Foundries: [34]. This leaves 42 with an inventor having the same name, all confidently not this Hui Zhang, which you can see here: [35]. --Keithrwalker (talk) 05:04, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

For the record, I misspelled the name here; it's Hui Zang, not "Zhang". Huon (talk) 00:12, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

2020 Changes

I plan to change the content and format of the article to better conform to the title and Wikipedia rules. A repeated concept will be to move some content to the Talk page to serve as supporting material. Anyone is welcome to move any of this material to another article. Please offer any comments or questions at the bottom of this section.

Supporting material from the current table will be moved to a table on the Talk page. It will not include the current columns except the key Inventor column nor be updated except when an inventor is added or supporting material changes.

1) Move the intro that contains history of Edison, Yamazaki, and Silverbrook to Talk. The history of who was at the top and when might be better suited for a historical article rather than a current list of prolific inventors.

2) Move the "Various Published Lists" sections to Talk. The history of sporadic and sometimes erroneous attempts at top inventor lists in various publications might be better suited for a historical article rather than a current list of prolific inventors. Combined with the first change, the article will now purely match the title.

3) Move the "Main fields of invention" column to Talk. In many cases this is a subjective analysis via original research with no proof even from the references. It has resulted in disagreement and cases of distortion at best / biased promotion at worse (not necessarily self-promotion). For example, one field listed for an inventor was a mosquito laser. A count of the inventor's patents containing "mosquito" or "insect" showed very few in count and in percentage, and thus no common interpretation of "main field" should include it.

4) Repair any broken references and explore a format change for references. Some format ideas I want to test include moving patent source refs to the right of "Inventor" name, moving to right of "# of patents" count, and moving refs that don't prove # of patents to Talk. This would reduce clutter, horizontal space, and make it easier to find proofs.

5) Clean up "Active" column now that there are sources for pre-1976 activity in Google Patents and WIPO. I began this effort already in the article, and my goal is to replace all (b)orn and (d)ied entries with actual years of first and last patent issue date. This will improve consistency, simplify the column, and give a time range context. Eventually I might add a "Years" count column and 'Patents/Year" average column.

6) Add a "Majority assignment" column to the table. I am in progress on this with 69/186 complete. This is the entity (with Wikipedia link when available) that has assignment for the majority of an inventor's patents. This is current and not original assignment, and so it is not necessarily an indication of which company the inventor worked at for most of their patent activity, but in most cases is. I will add the proof references to Talk page. In most cases proof is simply USPTO ref with "an/[majority entity]" added to the query. If more than 50% of an inventor's total, that is proof. However, for a small percentage of inventors (2.9% so far), the majority entity is less than 50%, which requires two or more proofs depending on percentages.

7) I would like to someday add a "Co-inventors" average column. I have no plan to implement this because I do not have a public source that I can provide proof references for. I can get the data but can't provide the required references to prove it. Please share any ideas how to collect and prove this. If I can’t automate collecting updates for it, I will probably not be interested. Ideally this would include all patents, but there would be value if, for practical reasons, it only included a set number such as the most recent 50 or 100 patents. Co-inventors is relatively unimportant but is an objective data point with some benefits. It might be interesting to see which inventors fall outside the average having relatively few or many co-inventors. --Keithrwalker (talk) 04:03, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Request to add John Colgrove to the List of Prolific Inventors

Hello, I work for Pure Storage and I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is John Colgrove and he is the co-founder and CTO of Pure Storage. He has over 200 patents to date.

Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
John Colgrove		212	United States	1991-2020	29	7	Pure Storage

Bookworm2446 (talk) 22:30, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Added to the article! Thank you for letting me know, and for making it so easy by following the example of the main article. Keithrwalker (talk) 23:42, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Request to add Santokh Badesha to the List of Prolific Inventors

Hello, I am following the model of Bookworm2446 and asking for a list addition. I am the ex-CTO for Xerox and I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Santokh Badesha and he is a Research Fellow at Xerox. He has over 250 patents to date.

Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Santokh Badesha		252	United States	1983-2019	36	7	Xerox

Added to the article! Thank you for letting me know, and for following Bookworm2446's example. Keithrwalker (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Request to add Corville Allen to the List of Prolific Inventors

I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Corville Allen and he is a Master Inventor at IBM. He has 246 patents to date.

Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Corville Allen		246	United States	2005-2020	15	16	IBM

Added to the article. Thanks for continuing to find inventors. Keithrwalker (talk) 04:27, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

References

Request to add Burkay Donderici to the List of Prolific Inventors

I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Burkay Donderici and he was an inventor at Halliburton. He has 217 patents to date.

Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Burkay Donderici		217	United States	2010-2020	11	19	Halliburton

Thank you! Confirmed Burkay qualifies. I added to my tracker and will post to the article later today. Keithrwalker (talk) 15:31, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Request to add a few FPGA industry inventors

I believe these inventors from Altera and Xilinx qualify. Would it be possible to add them? Thanks

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Martin Langhammer		209	United Kingdom	1998-2020	23	9	Altera
Bruce Pedersen		204	United States	1991-2020	30	7	Altera
Sergey Shumarayev		209	United States	1999-2020	22	9	Altera
Stephen Trimberger		242	United States	1991-2020	30	8	Xilinx

Thanks! Adding to the article. I am changing country of Martin Langhammer from UK to Canada and Sergey Shumarayev from USA to Russia based on the university locations they list in their LinkedIn profile. For country we try to list country of the majority of an inventor's upbringing, and university is the closest to that which I can find. Given sometimes people leave their country to attend a university, if you have evidence that their upbringing was elsewhere, please let me know. Keithrwalker (talk) 20:59, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Request to add Fredrik Gunnarsson and Craig M. Trim to the List of Prolific Inventors

Here is the information and citation for adding these two to the list.

Inventor		Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Fredrik Gunnarsson		201	United States	2002-2020	18	11	Ericsson
Craig M. Trim		200	United States	2010-2020	10	20	IBM

References

Request to add Lin Sun to the List of Prolific Inventors

I noticed on LinkedIn that Lin Sun (IBM) has 206 patents - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6764647573702635520/. I was unable to construct a proper query against patft.uspto.gov for her; I suspect there may be multiple inventors by this name. Perhaps someone else could figure this out? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beorhast (talk • contribs) 05:00, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for passing along Lin's name, Beorhast! I'll add Lin to the article. She has 209. There were other inventors to make this difficult, but we can weed those out with a query on assignment after doing some reverse logic. What I mean by that is I initially search with an "and" to include an inventor's primary company or companies, which is usually straightforward just looking at a few. Then I change the "and" to an "andnot." I inspect the results to see if any should be included with an "or". For example, I tried "andnot an/international" and find one for globalfoundries (a common assignment transfer from IBM) and a couple typos like "innternational" and "interational". So I added globalfoundries and then discovered there weren't any typos on "business machines". I'll have to go back to the other IBM inventors that have an assignment query. Using assignment isn't ideal because sometimes patents change assignment, have no assignment, inventors change companies, or there are typos in any of the search fields, but at least it works for Lin's patents to date. Of course, this all assumes there isn't more than one Lin Sun who has invented for IBM. For that I do a simple yet imperfect sanity check based on subject matter of the titles. --Keithrwalker (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to Change Country Definition

The Country column is interesting information, but problematic as currently defined.

1. Wikipedia rules prohibit original research, and yet admittedly I have to do original research with general web searches. Most come from various social media sites and require assumptions that an inventor's oldest listed educational institution is representative of their country of birth or upbringing.
2. Our definition is somewhat controversial and misunderstood as evidenced by attempts to change country -- often people seem to redefine it as country of residence, citizenship, or assignment company headquarters. All are valid definitions, but inconsistent with the article's definition.
3. Our definition as country of birth or upbringing when known means there are going to be factual errors because we cannot know with certainty in most cases.
4. Our definition is subjective as there is no universally agreed upon definition of "upbringing." While I interpret it as "majority of years as a resident from birth to age 18," that is entirely arbitrary and there are equally valid other interpretations.

Therefore, I propose "Country" column be renamed to "Residence" with definition: "Country of inventor's residence listed in their most recent patent issuance."

This definition means that now or in the future we may see countries that are no longer recognized internationally. For example, if a prolific inventor's last issuance was in the former Soviet Union, it would not be updated to Russia or any of the other countries that were recognized as this would require original research and likely be controversial. Keeping the definition strictly as country of most recent patent issuance keeps the column clear of original research and subjectivity.

If you want any amendments, please edit this section and add a comment below including the Wikipedia signature and timestamp like so... --Keithrwalker (talk) 23:31, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Major Edit Proposal: about to add 30+ Intel inventors with > 200 US Patents

I am proposing to edit the page to add the following Intel inventors: Robert Chau, Jack Kavalieros, Qinghua Li, Brian Doyle, Carlos Cordeiro, Michael Rothman, Vinodh Gopal, RAVI PILLARISETTY, Jong-Kae Fwu, Marko Radosavljevic, Ned Smith, Altug Koker, ElMoustapha Ould-Ahmed-Vall, Gilbert Wolrich, Vivek De, Robert Stacey, Robert Valentine, Matthew Metz, Abhishek Appu, Martin Langhammer, Bruce Pedersen, Sergey Yuryevich Shumarayev, JOYDEEP RAY, Gilbert Dewey, Gilbert Neiger, Yuan Zhu, Alexei Davydov, Alexander Maltsev, Solomon Trainin, Emily Qi, Anand Murthy. All have over 200 US patents per the USPTO web-site. If anyone objects or has suggestions, please comment. Thank you!

---

---

Thanks for doing all that research! Please add them to the table below so I can inspect and add to my weekly update. I've included Intel inventor Vincent J. Zimmer as example. Try to match the ref convention from Vincent's row. If you merely go to USPTO, start searching, and then paste the URL it won't match. It is best to start with an existing ref and edit its query. Make sure there aren't any inventors with the same name caught up in the ref. For example, a common name such as Ned Smith will likely erroneously result in multiple inventors with the same name if you just do an "in%2Fsmith-ned$". You might need an an%2Fintel or similar. Verify you aren't including inventors with different middle initials (unless obvious one or two were a typo). Some other signs that the ref might include duplicates is if there are long gaps between patents, assignment differences that are hard to explain, unusual inventor residence differences, change in technical fields, and different inventor name conventions.

Inventor should include inventor's first name, middle initial, period, and last name if known from any of the patents (sometimes an inventor only has a few with their middle initial). We want precision to help rule out duplicate inventors.

Residence is inventor's country listed in their most recent patent issuance... not citizenship or anything like that.

Don't worry about Patent Years, Years, or Patents / Year as most people get that wrong and my code automatically supplies it.

When copying Vincent's row to start a new inventor, include the "|-" line above his name through to the "||Intel" line. The end of the table ends with "|}". Before clicking Publish Changes, click Show Preview to verify there aren't any missing table tags that cause odd layout, and then click Publish Changes if it looks good.

--Keithrwalker (talk) 00:43, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Inventor		Patents	Residence	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment
Vincent J. Zimmer		452	USA	Keith	Keith	Keith	Intel

---

Hope I did this right! I limited the inventors to their Intel inventions (the inventor data in the USPTO did not reliably capture the middle initial sometimes). In a few cases they are Altera inventions instead of Intel (an Intel acquisition). In a couple places I included (an/Intel OR an/Apple) or (an/Intel OR an/McAfee) because of some patent divestitures a couple years back. I am sure the data is off by a little (e.g., if the had inventors patents from a previous company), but I thought it better to under-report than risk over-reporting.

Inventor		Patents	Residence	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority assignment "
Robert Chau		484	USA				Intel
Jack Kavalieros		430	USA				Intel
Qinghua Li		390	USA				Intel
Carlos Cordeiro		308	USA				Intel
Brian Doyle		322	USA				Intel
Jong-Kae Fwu		290	USA				Intel
RAVI PILLARISETTY		270	USA				Intel
Ned Smith		270	USA				Intel
Vinodh Gopal		268	USA				Intel
Alexei Davydov		260	USA				Intel
Gilbert Wolrich		237	USA				Intel
Marko Radosavljevic		254	USA				Intel
Robert Stacey		230	USA				Intel
Altug Koker		244	USA				Intel
ElMoustapha Ould-Ahmed-Vall		239	USA				Intel
Vivek De		232	USA				Intel
Matthew Metz		224	USA				Intel
Abhishek Appu		225	USA				Intel
Robert Valentine		218	USA				Intel
Martin Langhammer		222	USA				Altera
Gilbert Dewey		216	USA				Intel
JOYDEEP RAY		216	USA				Intel
Yuan Zhu		212	USA				Intel
Sergey Yuryevich Shumarayev		210	USA				Altera
Solomon Trainin		200	USA				Intel
Gilbert Neiger		203	USA				Intel
Bruce Pedersen		203	USA				Altera
Alexander Maltsev		202	USA				Intel
Emily Qi		201	USA				Intel
Anand Murthy		200	USA				Intel

Thanks again for all your work. I've been busy at work / home, but will try to complete by the May 25 or June 1, 2021 update. Keithrwalker (talk) 21:58, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!! No rush/worries! Looking forward to whenever the update can be made. I appreciate your maintenance of this page! As a side note, I did notice my list had some overlap with the existing list (i.e., the Altera inventors and Ned Smith are already there). (-Rob G)

Done! Took 3 hours to research the refs and update my tracker. Glad they are now up on the article, and all were confirmed to have 200+. Thanks again, Rob! --Keithrwalker (talk) 22:37, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

References

Request to add Zhijun Cai to the List of Prolific Inventors

I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Zhijun Cai and he is an inventor at Blackberry Ltd. He has 481 US patents to date. Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

Reference: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=cai+zhijun&FIELD1=INNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT

Caption text

Inventor	Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority of Assignment
Zhijun Cai	481	US	2007-2021	15	32	Blackberry Ltd.

Thank you! I'm sure Zhijun qualifies, but it will take awhile to figure out a proper reference because the one you've provided includes multiple inventors. Also needs "apt/1." Hopefully it'll be as simple as including "andnot an/caterpiller." I think it reasonably safe to assume those with Motorola, RIM, and similar assignment are the same as this Blackberry inventor based on subject matter and inventor cities. I should have ready to add to the article tomorrow when I run the weekly update. --Keithrwalker (talk) 22:05, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Request to add Chen Zhang to the List of Prolific Inventors

Dear Keithrwalker, just following the same format as prior requests, hopefully I am doing it right (this is my first time to post a Wiki section). I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Chen Zhang and he is an inventor at IBM. He has 243 US patents to date. Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

reference: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=apt%2F1+and+in%2FZhang-Chen+and+an%2F%28international+or+intenational%29&d=PTXT

Caption text

Inventor	Patents	Country	Patent Years	Years	Patents / Year	Majority of Assignment
Chen Zhang	243	United States	2015-2021	7	35	IBM

Thanks for letting me know! Added to the article. There appear to be multiple Chen Zhang IBMers (ours resides in New York whereas the others reside in Massachusetts, Brazil, and China). I amended the ref to only include New York. I scanned the 238 patents and they all seem to be in the same technology whereas the ones not in New York were not. If this state filter is incorrect, please identify which of these excluded patents should be included: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&Query=apt%2F1+and+in%2FZhang-Chen+and+an%2F%28International+or+Intenational%29+andnot+is%2FNY

--Keithrwalker (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Request to add Jeremy R. Fox to the List of Prolific Inventors

Hi Keith, I think Jeremy R. Fox already qualifies for the primary list, but I added his name to the list of inventors to watch for verification first.

Thanks! Confirmed and added to the article. --Keithrwalker (talk) 01:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Scott Brad Herner to the List of Prolific Inventors

I would like to request an addition to the list of Prolific Inventors. The name is Scott Brad Herner. He has 203 US patents to date. Most patents (192) are listed as Scott (Brad) Herner, but a few (11) are listed as Brad Herner. Here is the information and citation for adding him to the list:

apt/1 and ((in/Herner-S$) or (in/Herner-B$)) andnot in/Brian IPMatcha (talk) 22:44, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Confirmed and added to the article. I modified the ref a bit. Same count, but a bit safer to not wildcard last name and first initial. --Keithrwalker (talk) 02:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Michael Bender to the List of Prolific Inventors

Looks like Michael Bender (list of Inventors to Watch) hit the 200 mark recently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beorhast (talk • contribs) 22:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Paul Pickard to list (200 US Utility patents)

As of today, 3/1/2022. in/((pickard-paul OR pickard-paul-kenneth OR pickard-paul-k)) AND apt/1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.43.202.188 (talk) 23:09, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Added. Thank you! --Keithrwalker (talk) 01:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Gandhi Sivakumar to list (200 US Others patents)

As of today , Ganshi has 203 issued patents as per USPTO. Can be searched using "in/Gandhi and in/Sivakumar" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.174.141.167 (talk) 12:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Confirmed, thanks! Added to article. --Keithrwalker (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Marta Karczewicz to list (700+ US Others patents)

Reference this article: https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/marta-karczewicz-meet-qualcomms-patent-value-billionaire/

I tried this query: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&RS=%28APT%2F1+AND+IN%2Ftrim-craig%24%29&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=apt%2F1+and+in%2FKarczewicz-marta%24 and this shows 858 patents, but I'm not certain if there's an easy way to be certain this is all the same inventor.

Thanks! Beorhast (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again for another great find. Marta will go up with tomorrow's update. I found two Qualcomm co-inventors I'll add: Wei-Jung Chien and Vadim Seregin.

--Keithrwalker (talk) 02:57, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Request to add Russell S. VanBlon

Russell Speight VanBlon with 406 issued patents (in/(vanblon) is missing. He works in Lenovo and is based in Raleigh, NC. Idiyas (talk) 13:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Confirmed 407 and will add to the article in today's weekly update. Thanks! --Keithrwalker (talk) 14:42, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Request to add 133 inventors

Hi - We seem to be missing a prolific inventor Frederick E. Shelton, IV of Hillsboro, OH. He has 1,673 issued utility patents. Idiyas (talk) 22:58, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

We have 347 inventors with 300 patents or more. In wikipedia, we have captured 214 inventors. Source: www.idiyas.com. Please click on the third icon from right "Top Inventors" to see the top global 1000 list. This site captures utility patents only. The site also contains the top assignees. Can we add the missing entries in wikipedia from idiyas.com? Idiyas (talk) 23:10, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I will add people to the article in small batches as I improve refs for accuracy and rule out any names that are shared by more than one inventor. This process takes a long time. Thanks for mentioning the Top 1000 feature. Previously I was going through each state. Idiyas.com often under-represents inventors' patent counts because it does not appear that it normalizes the various locations, name convention inconsitencies, and typos for an inventor. Therefore, I expect there will be a lot more than 133 to be added. I will likely end up raising the threshold to 400 or even 500 depending on how many I find. Keithrwalker (talk) 00:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Re-inclusion of earlier listed inventors in Prolific inventor list

Hi Keith

Thanks so much for the honor to have included me in the Wikipedia prolific inventor list few months ago (with 208 patent count). I do understand reading the talk pages that this was withdrawn due to over heads from your side . Getting rolled off a credential as an individual is dis-heartening and would request to reconsider for re-inclusion of the earlier awarded ones (Normally when a new rule is introduced it applies for future from specific date) or as a suggestion ask if the user can bear the over head charges. Can I seek your attention Keith to help fix this?

Thanks Dr.Gandhi

(Disclaimer - The above message is purely my individual overture and does not represent any other forums/associations I belong to). Gandhisiva (talk) 13:17, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

See my reply to Vijay in the next section. Keithrwalker (talk) 04:18, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Request to revert back the threshold to 200

Hi Keith, +1 for the above comment and suggestions. Any possibility to revert back to the earlier threshold of 200? I have been in this list for the past one year with over 230+ patents. We see inclusion in this list as an achievement and a prestigious award. It will be bit disheartening for a lot of inventors (including me) when it is taken back. Requesting you to reconsider the decision.

Thank you Vijay49.206.132.116 (talk) 14:22, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you to you and Dr. Gandhi in the previous section for providing feedback.

The data no longer supports a 200 threshold. This was the case even before we were recently made aware of the "Top Inventors" list from IDiyas, which would eventually result in the threshold being raised to 400 as I get time to investigate the many missing inventors their site is revealing. It takes 15-30 minutes to properly investigate a single inventor. The threshold would need to be periodically adjusted when the list becomes impractical to maintain with quality or a threshold becomes relatively common due to too many inventors meeting the threshold. Both have been the case and neither are suitable for Wikipedia.

However, your experience highlights a drawback to the threshold mechanic that will repeatedly occur with the continual numeric rise of prolific inventors and output. Changing the mechanic to a fixed number of inventors rather than an increasing threshold of patents will solve this. People will still be removed as they are passed, but a fixed number such as the 100 most prolific inventors is better understood by all that a specific inventor may not forever be on the list.

I understand that being listed felt like an "honor," "credential," "award," or "achievement" as you two have mentioned, but Wikipedia is not a forum for that, and our patent success is in the public record with our USPTO ref and stands on its own independent of any article. Perhaps someone in our community would like to host and build a site that would better serve that purpose and allow features that can't be added to Wikipedia, such as a page for each inventor that shows more info: patents over time, bios, LinkedIn or similar professional links, links to any articles featuring an inventor's patents, downloadable list of patents, co-inventor lists, resolution of the global patent offices data and normalization issues, etc.

The IDiyas team might be able to pull most or even all of that off if they first fix: a) lack of normalization, and b) reliance on, emphasis on, and trust in location from USPTO data -- both result in substantial undercounts (e.g., #1 Shunpei Yamazaki) and overcounts (e.g., #10 Jin Young Kim who is not one but many inventors including some from the same company as shown in LinkedIn and USPTO data). I only use location data when it is the only means to normalize an inventor and only after thoroughly investigating each record that is the opposite of the location filter to verify it is properly normalized.

Regardless of who steps forward, I am willing to volunteer my code and guidance. I can be reached by going to my user page and then clicking the "Email this user" link in the navigation. Keithrwalker (talk) 04:17, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Original Article Introduction and sections below

Thomas Alva Edison was widely known as America's most prolific inventor, even after his death in 1931. He held a total of 1,093 U.S. patents (1,084 utility patents and 9 design patents). In 2003, his patent count was exceeded by Japanese inventor Shunpei Yamazaki. On February 26, 2008, Yamazaki's patent count was exceeded by Australian inventor Kia Silverbrook. In 2017, Silverbrook's patent count was exceeded by Yamazaki.

Threshold for inclusion

As the average number of patents per inventor is around 3, some sources define prolific inventors as five times above the average (in terms of patents), leading to a threshold of 15 patents. However, this table currently has an arbitrary cut-off limit for inclusion of 300 patents. This is purely for practical reasons – there are tens of thousands of inventors with more than 15 patents. The threshold of 300 patents means that some famous prolific inventors such as Nikola Tesla are not included in this list, as Tesla had 111 patents. Prolific inventors with fewer than 300 patents may be found in this article's Talk page, and such inventors are moved to the article when they meet the threshold.

Popular Science (1936)

In January 1936, Popular Science published a list of the "most prolific living inventors to be found in America today".

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	John F. O'Connor	949
2	Elihu Thomson	696
3	Carleton Ellis	648
4	Henry A. Wise Wood	434
5	John Hays Hammond Jr.	360
6	Clyde C. Farmer	344
7	Ethan I. Dodds	321
8	Edward Weston	309

Thomas Edison was not included in the list, as he died in 1931, five years earlier.

Time Magazine (2000)

On December 4, 2000, Time Magazine published a list of the "top five inventors".

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Thomas Edison	1,093
2	Melvin De Groote	925
3	Francis H. Richards	894
4	Elihu Thomson	696
5	Jerome Lemelson	554

This list only included U.S. inventors, so omitted Canadian inventor George Albert Lyon, with 993 U.S. patents at the time of publication, Japanese inventor Shunpei Yamazaki, with 745 U.S. patents, and Béla Barényi, with 595 German patents. Also omitted were John F. O'Connor with 949 U.S. patents, and Carleton Ellis, with 753 U.S. patents at the time of publication.

USA Today (2005)

On December 13, 2005, USA Today published a list of "the top 10 living U.S. patent holders":

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Shunpei Yamazaki	1,432
2	Donald Weder	1,322
3	Kia Silverbrook	810
4	George Spector	723
5	Gurtej Sandhu	576
6	Warren Farnworth	547
7	Salman Akram	527
8	Mark Gardner	512
9	Heinz Focke	508
10	Joseph Straeter	477

This research was performed by ipIQ of Chicago (now "The Patent Board") and 1790 Analytics of New Jersey. This list only considered living inventors, and thus did not include prolific inventors such as Thomas Edison, Melvin De Groote, and Elihu Thomson. This list included design patents, which are not patents for inventions.

Condé Nast Portfolio (2007)

On October 15, 2007, Condé Nast Portfolio Magazine published a list of "the world's most prolific inventors alive":

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Shunpei Yamazaki	1,811
2	Kia Silverbrook	1,646
3	Donald Weder	1,350
4	George Spector	722
5	Gurtej Sandhu	674
6	Leonard Forbes	671
7	Warren Farnworth	635
8	Salman Akram	612
9	Mark Gardner	515
10	Joseph Straeter	485

This research was performed by The Patent Board, a Chicago patent research and advisory firm. As with the USA Today list, the Portfolio list only considered living inventors, and thus did not include such prolific inventors as Thomas Edison. This list also included design patents, which are not patents for inventions.

Business Insider (2011)

On May 6, 2011, Business Insider published an article titled: "The Ten Greatest Inventors In The Modern Era" containing the following list:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	3,847
2	Shunpei Yamazaki	2,061
3	Thomas Edison	1,084
4	George Albert Lyon	993
5	Paul Lapstun	969
6	Donald Weder	951
7	John F. O'Connor	949
8	Leonard Forbes	948
9	Melvin De Groote	925
10	Francis H. Richards	894

This list included living and dead inventors, and only included granted utility patents (patents for inventions).

Strutpatent.com (2012)

Strutpatent.com publishes a list of the "Top 10 Inventors" listing inventors ranked by US patents (of all types) issued since 1990:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	4,279
2	Shunpei Yamazaki	1,664
3	Donald Weder	1,310
4	Paul Lapstun	1,098
5	Leonard Forbes	959
6	Gurtej Sandhu	728
7	Warren Farnworth	685
8	Salman Akram	653
9	Jay Walker	644
10	Chang-Hwan Hwang	634

This list included only patents granted since 1990, and includes design patents as well as utility patents.

Annual lists (2007–2012)

Strutpatent.com publishes weekly, monthly, and annual lists of the top ten categories, inventors and assignees of US patents since 2007. These lists include all patent types, not just patents for inventions (utility patents).

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2007:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	502
2	Audrey Goddard	232
3	William I. Wood	232
4	Austin L. Gurney	225
5	Chang-Hwan Hwang	203
6	Paul J. Godowski	193
7	Shunpei Yamazaki	139
8	Paul Lapstun	129
9	Leonard Forbes	120
10	Victoria Smith	112

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2008:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	576
2	Chang-Hwan Hwang	198
3	Audrey Goddard	168
4	Austin L. Gurney	167
5	William I. Wood	166
6	Paul J. Godowski	153
7	Shunpei Yamazaki	143
8	Paul Lapstun	137
9	Chang-Soo Lee	129
10	Victoria Smith	122

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2009:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	444
2	Shunpei Yamazaki	137
3	Paul Lapstun	113
4	Bartley K. Andre	92
5	Daniele De Iuliis	92
6	Jonathan Ive	92
7	Matthew Rohrbach	92
8	Richard P. Howarth	91
9	Duncan Robert Kerr	91
10	Leonard Forbes	91

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2010:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	709
2	Paul Lapstun	191
3	Shunpei Yamazaki	162
4	Simon Walmsley	115
5	Bartley K. Andre	114
6	Matthew Rohrbach	109
7	Richard P. Howarth	108
8	Jonathan Ive	108
9	Duncan Robert Kerr	108
10	Daniel J. Coster	106

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2011:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	754
2	Paul Lapstun	268
3	Shunpei Yamazaki	163
4	Hideo Ando	162
5	You Yoshioka	153
6	Scott H. Wittkopp	126
7	James M. Hart	125
8	Edward Jung	112
9	Simon Walmsley	112
10	Jay S. Walker	99

The top ten inventors of US patents for 2012:

Rank	Inventor	U.S. Patents
1	Kia Silverbrook	220
2	Edward Jung	180
3	Shunpei Yamazaki	172
4	Lowell Wood	169
5	Roderick Hyde	140
6	Bin Li	124
7	Royce Levien	122
8	Mark Malamud	119
9	Shunpei Yamazaki	118
10	John Rinaldo	117

This table omitted Rick Allen Hamilton II. The USPTO database shows Hamilton was an inventor or co-inventor of 128 US patents granted in 2012, which would place Hamilton at 6th rank for 2012.

Differences between lists

Differences in patent numbers between the various lists are due to several reasons:

• The lists were created on different dates. As many of the inventors in the lists are still active, the number of patents they hold are increasing.
• While the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the primary source for U.S. patent information, only patents issued since 1976 can be electronically searched by the inventor's name at the USPTO website. For some of the listed inventors, such as Thomas Edison, all of their patents predate 1976, so other sources must be used.
• Often entities list the worldwide total number of patents that they hold. This is not the same as the number of inventions, as a patent in one country may be for the same invention as a patent in another country. The set of patents covering a single invention in different countries is a Patent family.
• The Time, USA Today and Portfolio lists show the total number of U.S. patents, including patents for designs (Design patents) as well as patents for inventions (Utility patents).
• The annual lists from strutpatent.com list only those patents issued in the particular year to the inventor, not all of the inventor's patents.

Deep Linking into USPTO

Does this qualify as a functional deep link by author name?

https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search/resultAssignor?assignorName=WALKER,%20KEITH

For the few I have tested, the assignment total that is returned seems considerably higher than what I would have expected.

Beorhast (talk) 23:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Update Patent Search Terms

The current reference link for Esmael Dinan goes to the home USPTO page. Can we please update it to the below URL which includes his patents?

https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(ESMAEL%20OR%20ESMAIL)%20AND%20(DINAN).in.&db=USPAT&type=queryString

The section after .html is the query criteria that is sent to the USPTO Public Search tool via the link above. Spaces are replaced with %20. Please make sure to close any open windows of USPTO Public Search before you click the link.

I figured out the new link based on this guide from the USPTO: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/assets/files/Setting%20up%20external%20searches%20QRG%20-%20Patent%20Public%20Search.pdf Bmnorris25 (talk) 13:47, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, I had discovered the external.html landing page and still in the process of updating all inventors in my automation -- we aren't going to update just a single inventor at a time as this would needlessly notify everyone who watches the page and would result in improper sorting.

The one remaining issue is I have not had time to figure out how to scrape the patent count from Public Search. I use Python and the BeautifulSoup package to automate weekly updates. The new USPTO search is much less straightforward, and their design makes researching an inventor's ref so much more difficult because it forces everything into a single pane in a single tab. I would have multiple inventor search tabs and multiple patent doc tabs open at the same time to research a single inventor. Keithrwalker (talk) 15:07, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

You could also try a query like this https://assignment-api.uspto.gov/patent/basicSearch?query=WALKER%2C%20KEITH%20R.&rows=500 It returns a lot of XML and not everything listed is a patent - it seems to include a lot more related activity, however it is at least structured XML in the response and should be easier than having to peel about iframes with BS4 or some other scripting language. Beorhast (talk) 00:46, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

This API does not seem to work for what we need. basicSearch disobeys the intent of the query. In the example query of "Walker, Keith R." I would not expect the first record returned to be one of Keith A. Walker's patents. It seems to ignore the middle initial. Even advancedSearch lacks the query complexity needed for many inventors. Keithrwalker (talk) 05:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

You are right. One closer inspection I agree. This has been a very frustrating API change by the USPTO. Beorhast (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Sarbajit Rakshit

I believe we need to tweak the query. He should be #23 now with 1085 patents NOT 1084. He just went past Edison.

Here are the details: - 2 patents outside IN: 9342514 (mistakenly assigned to Dusseldorf), 8706712 (mistakenly assigned to Austin, TX), - 1083 inside IN,

 - where 1080 - Kolkata, 3 - West Bengal (11157866, 9507790, 9135335)

- 15 - without middle Name - 11317268, 11303683, 11281727, 11164575, 11151994, 11030337, 10991361, 10943588, 10891954, 10460292, 10181333, 10169658, 10171862, 9898665, 11501059

Source: https://idiyas.com/inventor/6464e9574e5957f4e63eb109 - You can get a listing of all the issued 1085 patents. FinanceguruCLT (talk) 17:31, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Every patent you list is already included in this article's "(A OR B1 OR B2).at. AND Rakshit-Sarbajit$.in." query. Removing the .at. part does not increase the number. The query has no filtering on location nor middle name (name is wildcarded with $, accepting no middle name and any middle name).

If you can identify which patent from idiyas is missing from this query, I can update the ref. Keithrwalker (talk) 18:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

patent Number: "9918076" doesn't exist in the 1084 list. You can find this patent on both patenguru and idiyas BUT cannot download a pdf from the USPTO website. I just sent a email to USPTO and will reply back once i have a response. Thank you for looking into this. FinanceguruCLT (talk) 13:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

My USPTO contact was very prompt. This was his response "This patent is not available in Patent Pubic Search nor is its application file available in Patent Center. It could have been withdrawn after issue or there could be some other unknown reason why we cannot access it (such as size?). I will look into this, but I will probably not be able to get back in touch with you until next week due to pressing projects." FinanceguruCLT (talk) 13:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

That is a withdrawn issuance so will not be included in the counts. Keithrwalker (talk) 15:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

yes, that's what it appears to be.  FinanceguruCLT (talk) 17:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your research. It is good to have people inspect inventor counts to make sure the URLs are as complete and accurate as we can get them. There are cases of typos, inconsistent naming conventions, and shared names that make this challenging.

By the way, if your browser shows a blank page when clicking the URLs like mine, you might have a configuration that interferes with loading. The workaround is to reload the resulting https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/ page, and then after it loads re-click the URL which will then send the query to the search page. Keithrwalker (talk) 19:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)