The USPTO issued 305,081 patents in 2013, an increase of 10.2 percent over 2012. The agency also published 347,148 utility and plant patent applications, an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous year. The total number of U.S. patent documents published in 2013 increased to 652,229, another all-time high. Table 1 shows the number of documents by type.

Table 1. US Patents by Type Issued in 2013*

*Based on preliminary data from the USPTO website. Totals may change after the fact due to withdrawn patents and published applications.

On August 6, the USPTO reached another milestone, issuing patent no. 8,500,000. Design patents are rapidly approaching the 700,000 mark; it is likely that D700,000 will be issued in February 2014.

The USPTO abolished the Statutory Invention Registration (SIR) Program in March. The number of SIRs published during the 28 years the program was in existence was approximately 2,260. The number of SIRs per year has steadily decreased since the USPTO began publishing applications in 2001. Only 13 SIRs were published this year, almost twice as many as in 2012.

Table 2. US Patent Number Ranges, Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2013