List of prolific inventors

The 100 known most prolific inventors based on worldwide utility patents are shown in the following table. While in many cases this is the number of utility patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, it may include utility patents granted by other countries, as noted by the source references for an inventor.

Prolific Inventors

Inventor		Pats	Fams	Fam %	Pat Yrs	Yrs	Pat /Yr	Inv /Pat	Pat Residence	Majority Assignment
Shunpei Yamazaki	[1]	6631	2914	43.9%	1972—2025	53.6	124	3.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Kia Silverbrook	[2]	4747	1311	27.6%	1994—2014	20	237	1.6	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Tao Luo	[3]	4323	3598	83.2%	2006—2025	19.5	222	5.6	USA	Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng	[4]	2832	1572	55.5%	2004—2025	21	135	3.9	USA	IBM
Junyi Li	[5]	2676	2256	84.3%	2002—2025	23	116	5.2	USA	Qualcomm
Frederick E. Shelton IV	[6]	2646	1212	45.8%	2005—2025	20.4	130	4.5	USA	Ethicon
Peter Gaal	[7]	2509	1930	76.9%	2002—2025	23.2	108	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen	[8]	2313	1777	76.8%	2009—2025	16.5	140	5.7	USA	Qualcomm
Xiaoxia Zhang	[9]	2103	1782	84.7%	2009—2025	16.8	125	5.5	USA	Qualcomm
Lowell L. Wood, Jr.	[10]	1998	1326	66.4%	1971—2025	53.4	37	8.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Esmael H. Dinan	[11]	1932	764	39.5%	2006—2025	19.4	100	3.6	USA	Ofinno
Chen-Hua Yu	[12]	1900	985	51.8%	1996—2025	29.4	65	4.9	Taiwan	TSMC
Roderick A. Hyde	[13]	1892	1252	66.2%	2001—2023	22.4	84	8.7	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hanbyul Seo	[14]	1788	1331	74.4%	2012—2025	13.5	132	3.8	South Korea	LG
Jing Sun	[15]	1747	1461	83.6%	2012—2025	12.9	135	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Shan Liu	[16]	1599	1014	63.4%	2013—2025	12.2	131	3.4	USA	Tencent
Jun Koyama	[17]	1512	618	40.9%	1991—2022	30.8	49	3.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Sarbajit K. Rakshit	[18]	1489	1262	84.8%	2013—2025	12.8	116	3.4	India	IBM
Gurtej Singh Sandhu	[19]	1432	584	40.8%	1991—2024	32.5	44	2.5	USA	Micron
Yunjung Yi	[20]	1389	934	67.2%	2011—2025	14.8	94	3.3	USA	LG
Shou-Shan Fan	[21]	1312	1097	83.6%	2006—2025	19.1	69	4.2	China	Hon Hai
Paul Lapstun	[22]	1305	246	18.9%	2000—2022	21.4	61	2.5	Australia	Silverbrook Research
Alexander Reznicek	[23]	1284	777	60.5%	2006—2025	19.6	66	3.9	USA	IBM
Suckchel Yang	[24]	1270	820	64.6%	2013—2025	12.3	103	4.7	South Korea	LG
Satoshi Seo	[25]	1252	594	47.4%	2002—2025	22.9	55	4.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Clarence T. Tegreene	[26]	1251	904	72.3%	2000—2025	24.8	50	10.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Juan Montojo	[27]	1237	1001	80.9%	2004—2025	21.7	57	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Kijun Kim	[28]	1178	817	69.4%	2013—2025	11.8	100	4.6	South Korea	LG
Takahiro Nishi	[29]	1176	387	32.9%	2001—2025	24.2	49	6.3	Japan	Panasonic
Jason L. Harris	[30]	1172	652	55.6%	2011—2025	14.8	79	6.0	USA	Ethicon
Joonkui Ahn	[31]	1169	759	64.9%	2013—2025	12.3	95	4.7	South Korea	LG
Ruilong Xie	[32]	1168	896	76.7%	2013—2025	12.8	91	4.2	USA	IBM
Marta Karczewicz	[33]	1149	943	82.1%	2000—2025	24.9	46	4.0	USA	Qualcomm
Edward K. Y. Jung	[34]	1111	794	71.5%	1996—2022	26.1	43	8.0	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Leonard Forbes	[35]	1109	411	37.1%	1975—2019	43.3	26	2.6	USA	Micron
Tingfang Ji	[36]	1098	811	73.9%	2006—2025	19.3	57	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Thomas Edison	[37]	1084	NA	NA	1869—1933	63.9	17	1.0	USA	Thomas Edison
Yan Zhou	[38]	1065	933	87.6%	2012—2025	13.2	81	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
Rick Allen Hamilton II	[39]	1064	715	67.2%	1999—2025	26.5	40	4.2	USA	IBM
Seungmin Lee	[40]	1064	798	75.0%	2014—2025	11.1	96	3.5	South Korea	LG
Jason K. Resch	[41]	1056	513	48.6%	2009—2025	15.7	67	4.2	USA	IBM
Hao Xu	[42]	1013	740	73.1%	2005—2025	20.6	49	4.7	China	Qualcomm
Donald E. Weder	[43]	1000	395	39.5%	1978—2015	37.1	27	1.1	USA	Weder Family Trust
Michael J. Sullivan	[44]	997	534	53.6%	1989—2024	34.5	29	3.8	USA	Acushnet Holdings
Ahmadreza Rofougaran	[45]	997	479	48.0%	2002—2025	23.4	43	6.4	USA	Broadcom
George Albert Lyon	[46]	993	NA	NA	1901—1965	64.5	15	1.0	Canada	Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare	[47]	993	640	64.5%	1992—2023	30.5	33	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Jay S. Walker	[48]	980	422	43.1%	1998—2024	26.3	37	5.2	USA	Walker Digital
John F. O'Connor	[49]	949	NA	NA	1901—1935	33.9	28	NA	USA	William H. Miner
Hajime Kimura	[50]	940	301	32.0%	2002—2025	23	41	2.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
William H. Eby	[51]	932	928	99.6%	1994—2025	31.5	30	1.2	USA	Monsanto
Melvin De Groote	[52]	925	NA	NA	1924—1966	41.8	22	NA	USA	Petrolite
David R. Hall	[53]	923	764	82.8%	1985—2025	40.2	23	3.8	USA	Hall Labs
Kyungmin Park	[54]	913	425	46.5%	2014—2025	11.5	79	5.2	USA	Ofinno
Nathan Myhrvold	[55]	908	614	67.6%	1994—2025	31	29	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hongyuan Zhang	[56]	904	488	54.0%	2009—2025	16.5	55	3.9	USA	Marvell
Satoshi Nagata	[57]	901	864	95.9%	2011—2025	14.1	64	4.0	Japan	NTT
Francis H. Richards	[58]	894	NA	NA	1899—1930	30.8	29	NA	USA	Francis H. Richards
Justin T. Mason	[59]	894	890	99.6%	2008—2025	17	53	1.0	USA	MS Technologies
Mark Malamud	[60]	886	690	77.9%	1997—2022	25.1	35	7.5	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chih-Chao Yang	[61]	876	559	63.8%	2003—2025	21.9	40	3.4	USA	IBM
Stuart C. Salter	[62]	870	817	93.9%	2009—2025	15.9	55	4.8	USA	Ford
Robert W. Lord	[63]	869	683	78.6%	2003—2025	21.6	40	7.6	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hua Zhou	[64]	864	440	50.9%	2012—2025	13.7	63	5.5	USA	Ofinno
Royce A. Levien	[65]	855	666	77.9%	1997—2020	23.4	37	6.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hsien-Wei Chen	[66]	852	394	46.2%	2005—2025	20.7	41	3.5	Taiwan	TSMC
Lee D. Whetsel	[67]	849	128	15.1%	1991—2017	26.4	32	1.1	USA	Texas Instruments
Muriel Y. Ishikawa	[68]	840	560	66.7%	2002—2023	21.2	40	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Youngdae Lee	[69]	839	662	78.9%	2014—2025	11.5	73	3.1	South Korea	LG
Michael K. Gschwind	[70]	836	442	52.9%	2001—2021	20.6	41	2.6	USA	IBM
Clifford A. Pickover	[71]	836	548	65.6%	1992—2024	32.2	26	3.9	USA	IBM
Devendra K. Sadana	[72]	827	470	56.8%	1983—2025	42.6	19	4.3	USA	IBM
SungDuck Chun	[73]	822	508	61.8%	2007—2025	17.8	46	3.8	South Korea	LG
Xue Dong	[74]	792	766	96.7%	2010—2025	14.9	53	7.4	China	BOE
Salman Akram	[75]	788	293	37.2%	1995—2025	30.3	26	2.9	USA	Micron
Warren M. Farnworth	[76]	774	289	37.3%	1990—2014	24.4	32	2.8	USA	Micron
Frederick A. Ware	[77]	774	232	30.0%	1981—2025	43.9	18	2.8	USA	Rambus
James A. Jorasch	[78]	774	309	39.9%	1994—2023	29	27	3.9	USA	Walker Digital
Bruce B. Doris	[79]	767	435	56.7%	1995—2025	30.3	25	4.2	USA	IBM
Shougo Sato	[80]	762	292	38.3%	1992—2025	33	23	1.8	Japan	Brother
Jeyhan Karaoguz	[81]	757	371	49.0%	1996—2020	23.8	32	4.6	USA	Broadcom
Ali Khakifirooz	[82]	757	413	54.6%	2011—2025	13.9	54	4.2	USA	IBM
Carleton Ellis	[83]	753	NA	NA	1902—1946	43.1	17	NA	USA	Ellis Foster Co
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur	[84]	752	609	81.0%	2006—2025	19.5	39	2.6	France	Cisco Systems
Toshiyasu Sugio	[85]	749	275	36.7%	2009—2025	16.1	47	4.9	Japan	Panasonic
Chung-Shi Liu	[86]	744	394	53.0%	2000—2025	25.8	29	6.1	Taiwan	TSMC
John M. Santosuosso	[87]	738	466	63.1%	2001—2022	20.7	36	3.9	USA	IBM
Hideo Ando	[88]	733	123	16.8%	1983—2020	36.7	20	3.1	Japan	Toshiba
Jonghyun Park	[89]	731	519	71.0%	2013—2025	12.8	57	3.8	USA	LG
George Spector	[90]	723	723	100%	1974—1998	24.6	29	2.1	USA	George Spector
Lisa Seacat DeLuca	[91]	721	525	72.8%	2009—2025	16.7	43	2.7	USA	IBM
Austin L. Gurney	[92]	718	182	25.3%	1999—2021	21.6	33	2.9	USA	Genentech
Gregory J. Boss	[93]	718	495	68.9%	2008—2025	17.6	41	4.2	USA	IBM
Woosuk Ko	[94]	711	308	43.3%	2015—2025	10.5	68	3.4	South Korea	LG
Tetsujiro Kondo	[95]	700	528	75.4%	1987—2021	34	21	3.8	Japan	Sony
Xiaochuan Chen	[96]	697	675	96.8%	2014—2025	11.3	62	7.0	China	BOE
Elihu Thomson	[97]	696	NA	NA	1899—1935	35.9	19	NA	USA	GE
Hyoungsuk Jeon	[98]	695	312	44.9%	2009—2025	15.9	44	5.6	USA	Ofinno
Eric C. Leuthardt	[99]	686	463	67.5%	2006—2025	19	36	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Aleksandar Damnjanovic	[100]	684	499	73.0%	2003—2025	22.2	31	4.4	USA	Qualcomm

This table is usually updated every Tuesday, and is current as of November 18,2025 ^[update] .

The columns are defined as follows:

• Inventor: The name of the inventor.
• Pats: The number of utility patents that have been issued. Only utility patents (or the international equivalent) are listed, as a utility patent is a patent for an invention. Not all patents are for inventions. Other patent types include: design patents for the ornamental design of an object; plant patents for plant varieties; and reissue patents, where a correction is made to an already granted patent. This list does not include patent applications (patents pending) as there is no guarantee that a patent application actually describes a novel invention until the patent is granted.
• Fams: The number of patent families, which in USPTO data includes an original or continuation-in-part patent by itself or with one or more continuation or divisional patents based on the original or continuation-in-part patent. This is different than global patent families that represent a patent filed in more than one jurisdiction. "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records.
• Fam %: The percentage of original and continuation-in-part patents that are in the inventor's patent portfolio [Fams column divided by Pats column, rounded to first decimal as a percentage]. "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records.
• Pat Yrs: The first and last year in which an inventor received a patent issuance.
• Yrs: The number of years from first issuance to most recent issuance, rounded to first decimal based on dates.
• Pats /Yr: The average number of patents received per year [Pats column divided by Yrs column, rounded].
• Inv / Pat: The average number of inventors listed on the inventor's most recent 50 patents as of September 7,2021 ^[update] or on the date the inventor was added to the table if later. "NA" signifies the inventor was active prior to digital records.
• Pat Residence: The country of inventor's residence listed in their most recent patent issuance.
• Majority Assignment: The entity that has the most patents assigned from an inventor's portfolio. This is current and not original assignment. It is usually, but not always an indication of which company the inventor worked at for the majority of their patent activity.

Significance of inventions

This table is a sortable list of the most prolific inventors as measured by utility patents granted. It does not include other types of invention, such as inventions that were never applied for nor granted, for which there is no known source. Nor does the table attempt to measure the significance of an inventor and their inventions. The significance of inventions is often not apparent until many decades after the invention has been made. For recent inventors, it is not yet possible to determine their place in history.

Various published lists

Rankings of prolific inventors have been published at various times. However, until the patent records were digitized, these lists were very tedious to prepare, as many thousands of patent records had to be checked manually. Even after digitization, it is still not a simple process. While the USPTO keeps statistics for annual rankings of inventions assigned to companies, it no longer publishes rankings of individual inventors. The last such list was published by the USPTO in 1998. ^{[Info 1]} Also, patents predating 1976 have not yet been digitized in the USPTO records. This means that patents before 1976 will not be included in a USPTO search by inventor name, and the number of patents granted before 1976 must be added to current searches.

A more extensive list of prolific inventors with additional information and ability to filter on country, gender, time period, patent type, and Nobel laureate title can be found at idiyas.com/top/inventors . There are some discrepancies with this article due to different inventor queries that attempt to account for data issues such as typos and multiple inventors with the same name.

See also

• Timeline of historic inventions
• List of inventors

References

1. "USPTO publication: Prolific Inventors Receiving Utility Patents 1988–1997" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-05-02. Retrieved 2011-07-12.

References of Inventors' Patents

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