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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy was the list of inventors so long? It had a lot of bright ideas.

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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

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Inventor Pats Fams Fam % Pat Yrs Yrs Pat /Yr Inv /Pat Pat Residence Majority Assignment
Shunpei Yamazaki [1] 6737 2982 44.3% 1972—2026 54.3 124 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] 4674 3918 83.8% 2006—2026 20.2 231 5.6 USA Qualcomm
Kangguo Cheng [4] 2866 1599 55.8% 2004—2026 21.7 132 3.9 USA IBM
Junyi Li [5] 2856 2428 85.0% 2002—2026 23.7 121 5.2 USA Qualcomm
Frederick E. Shelton IV [6] 2748 1265 46.0% 2005—2026 21.1 130 4.5 USA Ethicon
Peter Gaal [7] 2662 2058 77.3% 2002—2026 24 111 5.9 USA Qualcomm
Wanshi Chen [8] 2442 1875 76.8% 2009—2026 17.3 141 5.7 USA Qualcomm
Xiaoxia Zhang [9] 2332 1984 85.1% 2009—2026 17.5 133 5.5 USA Qualcomm
Esmael H. Dinan [10] 2129 910 42.7% 2006—2026 20.1 106 3.6 USA Ofinno
Lowell L. Wood, Jr. [11] 2003 1328 66.3% 1971—2026 54.3 37 8.8 USA Intellectual Ventures
Chen-Hua Yu [12] 1974 1029 52.1% 1996—2026 30.2 65 4.9 Taiwan TSMC
Jing Sun [13] 1942 1633 84.1% 2012—2026 13.6 143 5.9 USA Qualcomm
Roderick A. Hyde [14] 1893 1252 66.1% 2001—2023 22.4 85 8.7 USA Intellectual Ventures
Hanbyul Seo [15] 1834 1373 74.9% 2012—2026 14.3 128 3.8 South Korea LG
Shan Liu [16] 1815 1175 64.7% 2013—2026 12.9 141 3.4 USA Tencent
Sarbajit K. Rakshit [17] 1615 1386 85.8% 2013—2026 13.6 119 3.4 India IBM
Jun Koyama [18] 1515 619 40.9% 1991—2026 34.9 43 3.1 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Yunjung Yi [19] 1455 983 67.6% 2011—2026 15.6 93 3.3 USA LG
Gurtej Singh Sandhu [20] 1436 584 40.7% 1991—2024 32.5 44 2.5 USA Micron
Ruilong Xie [21] 1371 1095 79.9% 2013—2026 13.5 102 4.2 USA IBM
Suckchel Yang [22] 1326 872 65.8% 2013—2026 13.1 101 4.7 South Korea LG
Shou-Shan Fan [23] 1318 1103 83.7% 2006—2026 20.2 65 4.2 China Hon Hai
Alexander Reznicek [24] 1317 809 61.4% 2006—2026 20.3 65 3.9 USA IBM
Paul Lapstun [25] 1306 247 18.9% 2000—2026 25.2 52 2.5 Australia Silverbrook Research
Satoshi Seo [26] 1298 621 47.8% 2002—2026 23.6 55 4.1 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
Juan Montojo [27] 1297 1057 81.5% 2004—2026 22.4 58 6.9 USA Qualcomm
Clarence T. Tegreene [28] 1253 904 72.1% 2000—2025 24.8 51 10.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Takahiro Nishi [29] 1252 399 31.9% 2001—2026 24.9 50 6.3 Japan Panasonic
Yan Zhou [30] 1249 1107 88.6% 2012—2026 13.9 90 4.4 USA Qualcomm
Jason L. Harris [31] 1225 677 55.3% 2011—2026 15.6 79 6.0 USA Ethicon
Marta Karczewicz [32] 1210 1001 82.7% 2000—2026 25.6 47 4.0 USA Qualcomm
Kijun Kim [33] 1188 827 69.6% 2013—2026 12.6 94 4.6 South Korea LG
Joonkui Ahn [34] 1183 770 65.1% 2013—2026 13.1 90 4.7 South Korea LG
Tingfang Ji [35] 1144 848 74.1% 2006—2026 20 57 6.9 USA Qualcomm
Seungmin Lee [36] 1131 861 76.1% 2014—2026 11.8 96 3.5 South Korea LG
Edward K. Y. Jung [37] 1112 794 71.4% 1996—2022 26.1 43 8.0 USA Intellectual Ventures
Leonard Forbes [38] 1109 411 37.1% 1975—2019 43.3 26 2.6 USA Micron
Hao Xu [39] 1103 825 74.8% 2005—2026 21.3 52 4.7 China Qualcomm
Thomas Edison [40] 1084 NA NA 1869—1933 63.9 17 1.0 USA Thomas Edison
Jason K. Resch [41] 1073 515 48.0% 2009—2026 16.7 64 4.2 USA IBM
Rick Allen Hamilton II [42] 1065 716 67.2% 1999—2026 27.3 39 4.2 USA IBM
Justin T. Mason [43] 1047 1043 99.6% 2008—2026 17.7 59 1.0 USA MS Technologies
Satoshi Nagata [44] 1025 988 96.4% 2011—2026 14.8 69 4.0 Japan NTT
Ahmadreza Rofougaran [45] 1017 488 48.0% 2002—2026 24 42 6.4 USA Broadcom
Donald E. Weder [46] 1000 395 39.5% 1978—2015 37.1 27 1.1 USA Weder Family Trust
Michael J. Sullivan [47] 997 534 53.6% 1989—2024 34.5 29 3.8 USA Acushnet Holdings
George Albert Lyon [48] 993 NA NA 1901—1965 64.5 15 1.0 Canada Lyon George Albert
Jordin T. Kare [49] 993 640 64.5% 1992—2023 30.5 33 9.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Kyungmin Park [50] 985 469 47.6% 2014—2026 12.3 80 5.2 USA Ofinno
Jay S. Walker [51] 981 422 43.0% 1998—2024 26.3 37 5.2 USA Walker Digital
William H. Eby [52] 971 967 99.6% 1994—2026 32.3 30 1.2 USA Monsanto
Hua Zhou [53] 971 517 53.2% 2012—2026 14.5 67 5.5 USA Ofinno
Hajime Kimura [54] 961 310 32.3% 2002—2026 23.7 41 2.6 Japan Semiconductor Energy Laboratory
John F. O'Connor [55] 949 NA NA 1901—1935 33.9 28 NA USA William H. Miner
David R. Hall [56] 927 766 82.6% 1985—2026 40.7 23 3.8 USA Hall Labs
Melvin De Groote [57] 925 NA NA 1924—1966 41.8 22 NA USA Petrolite
Hongyuan Zhang [58] 924 505 54.7% 2009—2026 17.2 54 3.9 USA Marvell
Chih-Chao Yang [59] 917 599 65.3% 2003—2026 22.6 41 3.4 USA IBM
Stuart C. Salter [60] 913 856 93.8% 2009—2026 16.6 55 4.8 USA Ford
Nathan Myhrvold [61] 910 614 67.5% 1994—2025 31 29 11.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Francis H. Richards [62] 894 NA NA 1899—1930 30.8 29 NA USA Francis H. Richards
Mark Malamud [63] 886 690 77.9% 1997—2022 25.1 35 7.5 USA Intellectual Ventures
Hsien-Wei Chen [64] 873 404 46.3% 2005—2026 21.4 41 3.5 Taiwan TSMC
Robert W. Lord [65] 870 683 78.5% 2003—2025 21.6 40 7.6 USA Intellectual Ventures
Youngdae Lee [66] 866 688 79.4% 2014—2026 12.3 70 3.1 South Korea LG
Royce A. Levien [67] 855 666 77.9% 1997—2020 23.4 37 6.8 USA Intellectual Ventures
Lee D. Whetsel [68] 853 128 15.0% 1991—2017 26.4 32 1.1 USA Texas Instruments
SungDuck Chun [69] 843 528 62.6% 2007—2026 18.7 45 3.8 South Korea LG
Muriel Y. Ishikawa [70] 840 560 66.7% 2002—2023 21.2 40 11.1 USA Intellectual Ventures
Michael K. Gschwind [71] 837 442 52.8% 2001—2021 20.6 41 2.6 USA IBM
Clifford A. Pickover [72] 837 548 65.5% 1992—2024 32.2 26 3.9 USA IBM
Devendra K. Sadana [73] 829 471 56.8% 1983—2026 43.3 19 4.3 USA IBM
Xue Dong [74] 819 790 96.5% 2010—2026 15.6 52 7.4 China BOE
Hyoungsuk Jeon [75] 805 395 49.1% 2009—2026 16.6 48 5.6 USA Ofinno
Jean-Philippe M. Vasseur [76] 796 653 82.0% 2006—2026 20.3 39 2.6 France Cisco Systems
Frederick A. Ware [77] 795 233 29.3% 1981—2026 44.6 18 2.8 USA Rambus
Salman A. Akram [78] 789 294 37.3% 1995—2026 30.7 26 2.9 USA Micron
Toshiyasu Sugio [79] 781 287 36.7% 2009—2026 16.9 46 4.9 Japan Panasonic
James A. Jorasch [80] 776 309 39.8% 1994—2023 29 27 3.9 USA Walker Digital
Warren M. Farnworth [81] 774 289 37.3% 1990—2014 24.4 32 2.8 USA Micron
Shougo Sato [82] 772 294 38.1% 1992—2026 33.8 23 1.8 Japan Brother
Bruce B. Doris [83] 768 435 56.6% 1995—2025 30.3 25 4.2 USA IBM
Chung-Shi Liu [84] 761 401 52.7% 2000—2026 26.5 29 6.1 Taiwan TSMC
Ali Khakifirooz [85] 760 415 54.6% 2011—2026 14.4 53 4.2 USA IBM
Jeyhan Karaoguz [86] 757 371 49.0% 1996—2020 23.8 32 4.6 USA Broadcom
Carleton Ellis [87] 753 NA NA 1902—1946 43.1 17 NA USA Ellis Foster Co
Jonghyun Park [88] 751 535 71.2% 2013—2026 13.5 56 3.8 USA LG
John M. Santosuosso [89] 738 466 63.1% 2001—2022 20.7 36 3.9 USA IBM
Hideo Ando [90] 733 123 16.8% 1983—2020 36.7 20 3.1 Japan Toshiba
Woosuk Ko [91] 728 325 44.6% 2015—2026 11.2 65 3.4 South Korea LG
Lisa Seacat DeLuca [92] 727 530 72.9% 2009—2026 17.1 43 2.7 USA IBM
Gregory J. Boss [93] 725 501 69.1% 2008—2026 18.5 39 4.2 USA IBM
George Spector [94] 723 723 100% 1974—1998 24.6 29 2.1 USA George Spector
Moon-il Lee [95] 719 395 54.9% 2010—2026 15.7 46 5.3 USA LG
Austin L. Gurney [96] 718 182 25.3% 1999—2021 21.6 33 2.9 USA Genentech
Xiaochuan Chen [97] 715 692 96.8% 2014—2026 12.1 59 7.0 China BOE
Aleksandar Damnjanovic [98] 710 522 73.5% 2003—2026 22.9 31 4.4 USA Qualcomm
Lawrence A. Clevenger [99] 701 456 65.0% 1996—2026 30.2 23 5.1 USA IBM
Tetsujiro Kondo [100] 700 528 75.4% 1987—2021 34 21 3.8 Japan Sony

This table is usually updated every Tuesday, and is current as of August 11, 2026.

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 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

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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

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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

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References

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  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

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