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]	6614	2904	43.9%	1972—2025	53.4	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]	4215	3510	83.3%	2006—2025	19.3	218	5.6	USA	Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng	[4]	2819	1559	55.3%	2004—2025	20.9	135	3.9	USA	IBM
Junyi Li	[5]	2622	2209	84.2%	2002—2025	22.9	114	5.2	USA	Qualcomm
Frederick E. Shelton IV	[6]	2609	1197	45.9%	2005—2025	20.2	129	4.5	USA	Ethicon
Peter Gaal	[7]	2477	1907	77.0%	2002—2025	23.1	107	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen	[8]	2286	1757	76.9%	2009—2025	16.4	139	5.7	USA	Qualcomm
Xiaoxia Zhang	[9]	2044	1728	84.5%	2009—2025	16.7	122	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]	1898	753	39.7%	2006—2025	19.2	99	3.6	USA	Ofinno
Roderick A. Hyde	[12]	1892	1252	66.2%	2001—2023	22.4	84	8.7	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chen-Hua Yu	[13]	1885	982	52.1%	1996—2025	29.3	64	4.9	Taiwan	TSMC
Hanbyul Seo	[14]	1777	1321	74.3%	2012—2025	13.4	133	3.8	South Korea	LG
Jing Sun	[15]	1697	1413	83.3%	2012—2025	12.7	134	5.9	USA	Qualcomm
Shan Liu	[16]	1539	976	63.4%	2013—2025	12	128	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]	1463	1236	84.5%	2013—2025	12.7	115	3.4	India	IBM
Gurtej Singh Sandhu	[19]	1432	584	40.8%	1991—2024	32.5	44	2.5	USA	Micron
Yunjung Yi	[20]	1374	931	67.8%	2011—2025	14.7	93	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]	1277	771	60.4%	2006—2025	19.4	66	3.9	USA	IBM
Suckchel Yang	[24]	1259	811	64.4%	2013—2025	12.2	103	4.7	South Korea	LG
Clarence T. Tegreene	[25]	1251	904	72.3%	2000—2025	24.8	50	10.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Satoshi Seo	[26]	1244	592	47.6%	2002—2025	22.8	55	4.1	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Juan Montojo	[27]	1227	992	80.8%	2004—2025	21.6	57	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Kijun Kim	[28]	1175	816	69.4%	2013—2025	11.8	100	4.6	South Korea	LG
Joonkui Ahn	[29]	1165	757	65.0%	2013—2025	12.1	96	4.7	South Korea	LG
Takahiro Nishi	[30]	1162	382	32.9%	2001—2025	24.1	48	6.3	Japan	Panasonic
Jason L. Harris	[31]	1152	643	55.8%	2011—2025	14.6	79	6.0	USA	Ethicon
Ruilong Xie	[32]	1136	866	76.2%	2013—2025	12.6	90	4.2	USA	IBM
Marta Karczewicz	[33]	1129	926	82.0%	2000—2025	24.7	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]	1085	800	73.7%	2006—2025	19.1	57	6.9	USA	Qualcomm
Thomas Edison	[37]	1084	NA	NA	1869—1933	63.9	17	1.0	USA	Thomas Edison
Rick Allen Hamilton II	[38]	1064	715	67.2%	1999—2025	26.5	40	4.2	USA	IBM
Seungmin Lee	[39]	1053	788	74.8%	2014—2025	10.9	97	3.5	South Korea	LG
Jason K. Resch	[40]	1050	513	48.9%	2009—2025	15.7	67	4.2	USA	IBM
Yan Zhou	[41]	1013	892	88.1%	2012—2025	13	78	4.4	USA	Qualcomm
Donald E. Weder	[42]	1000	395	39.5%	1978—2015	37.1	27	1.1	USA	Weder Family Trust
Michael J. Sullivan	[43]	997	534	53.6%	1989—2024	34.5	29	3.8	USA	Acushnet Holdings
George Albert Lyon	[44]	993	NA	NA	1901—1965	64.5	15	1.0	Canada	Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare	[45]	993	640	64.5%	1992—2023	30.5	33	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Ahmadreza Rofougaran	[46]	989	476	48.1%	2002—2025	23.2	43	6.4	USA	Broadcom
Hao Xu	[47]	988	719	72.8%	2005—2025	20.4	48	4.7	China	Qualcomm
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]	935	299	32.0%	2002—2025	22.8	41	2.6	Japan	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
William H. Eby	[51]	931	927	99.6%	1994—2025	31.4	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
Nathan Myhrvold	[54]	908	614	67.6%	1994—2025	31	29	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Hongyuan Zhang	[55]	901	486	53.9%	2009—2025	16.2	56	3.9	USA	Marvell
Kyungmin Park	[56]	899	419	46.6%	2014—2025	11.4	79	5.2	USA	Ofinno
Francis H. Richards	[57]	894	NA	NA	1899—1930	30.8	29	NA	USA	Francis H. Richards
Mark Malamud	[58]	886	690	77.9%	1997—2022	25.1	35	7.5	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Justin T. Mason	[59]	884	880	99.5%	2008—2025	16.8	53	1.0	USA	MS Technologies
Satoshi Nagata	[60]	878	841	95.8%	2011—2025	13.9	63	4.0	Japan	NTT
Robert W. Lord	[61]	869	683	78.6%	2003—2025	21.6	40	7.6	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Chih-Chao Yang	[62]	868	551	63.5%	2003—2025	21.7	40	3.4	USA	IBM
Stuart C. Salter	[63]	862	809	93.9%	2009—2025	15.7	55	4.8	USA	Ford
Royce A. Levien	[64]	855	666	77.9%	1997—2020	23.4	37	6.8	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Lee D. Whetsel	[65]	847	128	15.1%	1991—2017	26.4	32	1.1	USA	Texas Instruments
Hua Zhou	[66]	846	436	51.5%	2012—2025	13.6	62	5.5	USA	Ofinno
Hsien-Wei Chen	[67]	845	390	46.2%	2005—2025	20.4	41	3.5	Taiwan	TSMC
Muriel Y. Ishikawa	[68]	840	560	66.7%	2002—2023	21.2	40	11.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Michael K. Gschwind	[69]	836	442	52.9%	2001—2021	20.6	41	2.6	USA	IBM
Clifford A. Pickover	[70]	836	548	65.6%	1992—2024	32.2	26	3.9	USA	IBM
Youngdae Lee	[71]	831	654	78.7%	2014—2025	11.4	73	3.1	South Korea	LG
Devendra K. Sadana	[72]	827	470	56.8%	1983—2025	42.6	19	4.3	USA	IBM
SungDuck Chun	[73]	820	507	61.8%	2007—2025	17.8	46	3.8	South Korea	LG
Xue Dong	[74]	788	762	96.7%	2010—2025	14.7	54	7.4	China	BOE
Salman Akram	[75]	787	292	37.1%	1995—2025	30.2	26	2.9	USA	Micron
Warren M. Farnworth	[76]	774	289	37.3%	1990—2014	24.4	32	2.8	USA	Micron
James A. Jorasch	[77]	773	309	40.0%	1994—2023	29	27	3.9	USA	Walker Digital
Frederick A. Ware	[78]	771	230	29.8%	1981—2025	43.6	18	2.8	USA	Rambus
Bruce B. Doris	[79]	767	435	56.7%	1995—2025	30.3	25	4.2	USA	IBM
Jeyhan Karaoguz	[80]	757	371	49.0%	1996—2020	23.8	32	4.6	USA	Broadcom
Ali Khakifirooz	[81]	757	413	54.6%	2011—2025	13.9	54	4.2	USA	IBM
Shougo Sato	[82]	757	290	38.3%	1992—2025	32.8	23	1.8	Japan	Brother
Carleton Ellis	[83]	753	NA	NA	1902—1946	43.1	17	NA	USA	Ellis Foster Co
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur	[84]	747	604	80.9%	2006—2025	19.4	39	2.6	France	Cisco Systems
Chung-Shi Liu	[85]	740	392	53.0%	2000—2025	25.7	29	6.1	Taiwan	TSMC
John M. Santosuosso	[86]	738	466	63.1%	2001—2022	20.7	36	3.9	USA	IBM
Toshiyasu Sugio	[87]	735	269	36.6%	2009—2025	16	46	4.9	Japan	Panasonic
Hideo Ando	[88]	733	123	16.8%	1983—2020	36.7	20	3.1	Japan	Toshiba
George Spector	[89]	723	723	100%	1974—1998	24.6	29	2.1	USA	George Spector
Jonghyun Park	[90]	723	517	71.5%	2013—2025	12.6	57	3.8	USA	LG
Lisa Seacat DeLuca	[91]	720	524	72.8%	2009—2025	16.4	44	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]	705	302	42.8%	2015—2025	10.3	68	3.4	South Korea	LG
Tetsujiro Kondo	[95]	700	528	75.4%	1987—2021	34	21	3.8	Japan	Sony
Elihu Thomson	[96]	696	NA	NA	1899—1935	35.9	19	NA	USA	GE
Xiaochuan Chen	[97]	687	665	96.8%	2014—2025	11.1	62	7.0	China	BOE
Hyoungsuk Jeon	[98]	686	310	45.2%	2009—2025	15.8	43		USA	Ofinno
Eric C. Leuthardt	[99]	685	462	67.4%	2006—2025	18.8	36	9.1	USA	Intellectual Ventures
Irwin Gerszberg	[100]	682	312	45.7%	1994—2023	29.2	23	6.8	USA	AT&T

This table is usually updated every Tuesday, and is current as of September 23,2025 ^[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. Roderick A. Hyde
13. Chen-Hua Yu
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. Clarence T. Tegreene
26. Satoshi Seo
27. Juan Montojo
28. Kijun Kim
29. Joonkui Ahn
30. Takahiro Nishi
31. Jason L. Harris
32. Ruilong Xie
33. Marta Karczewicz
34. Edward K. Y. Jung
35. Leonard Forbes
36. Tingfang Ji
37. Thomas Edison
38. Rick Allen Hamilton II
39. Seungmin Lee
40. Jason K. Resch
41. Yan Zhou
42. Donald E. Weder
43. Michael J. Sullivan
44. George Albert Lyon
45. Jordin T. Kare
46. Ahmadreza Rofougaran
47. Hao Xu
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. Nathan Myhrvold
55. Hongyuan Zhang
56. Kyungmin Park
57. Francis H. Richards
58. Mark Malamud
59. Justin T. Mason
60. Satoshi Nagata
61. Robert W. Lord
62. Chih-Chao Yang
63. Stuart C. Salter
64. Royce A. Levien
65. Lee D. Whetsel
66. Hua Zhou
67. Hsien-Wei Chen
68. Muriel Y. Ishikawa
69. Michael K. Gschwind
70. Clifford A. Pickover
71. Youngdae Lee
72. Devendra K. Sadana
73. SungDuck Chun
74. Xue Dong
75. Salman Akram
76. Warren M. Farnworth
77. James A. Jorasch
78. Frederick A. Ware
79. Bruce B. Doris
80. Jeyhan Karaoguz
81. Ali Khakifirooz
82. Shougo Sato
83. Carleton Ellis
84. Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur
85. Chung-Shi Liu
86. John M. Santosuosso
87. Toshiyasu Sugio
88. Hideo Ando
89. George Spector
90. Jonghyun Park
91. Lisa Seacat DeLuca
92. Austin L. Gurney
93. Gregory J. Boss
94. Woosuk Ko
95. Tetsujiro Kondo
96. Elihu Thomson
97. Xiaochuan Chen
98. Hyoungsuk Jeon
99. Eric C. Leuthardt
100. Irwin Gerszberg