Data Source:

United States Patent and Trademark Office

Analysis:

Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies

Patent data is provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and consists of Utility patents granted by inventor. Geographic designation is given by the location of the first inventor named on the patent application. Silicon Valley patents include only those filed by residents of the Silicon Valley city-defined region. Other Includes: Teaching & Amusement Devices, Transportation/Vehicles, Motors, Engines and Pumps, Dispensing & Material Handling, Food, Plant & Animal Husbandry, Furniture & Receptacles, Apparel, Textiles & Fastenings, Body Adornment, Nuclear Technology, Ammunition & Weapons, Earth Working and Agricultural Machinery, Machine Elements or Mechanisms, and Superconducting Technology. The technology area categorization method was slightly modified in 2012, resulting in minor changes to the proportion of patents in each technology area relative to previous years. Population estimates used to calculate the number of patents granted per 100,000 people were from the California Department of Finance, E-1: City/County Population Estimates with Annual Percent Change. Beginning in 2015, the USPTO stopped classifying patents in the United States Patent Classification (USPC) and began using the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), so some USPC codes were unavailable. In those cases, unofficial routing classifications were used in place of the missing UPSC classifications. This process may create some minor inconsistencies between the 2015 and previous years’ data sorted by Technology Area. Data by technology area was not available for 2019-22 at the time of analysis. 2022 estimate based on data through November 30.

*data through November

**data through September 23

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