Overview of States with the most Patents
This map visualizes the States with the most patents during the period 01/01/1963 – 12/31/2015. The residence of the first-named inventor determines the origin of a patent.
Since the data comes from nearly half a century we normalized it over the years to represent the patent count per 100,000 people.
Delaware holds the highest patent count per capita with 53.07 followed by Idaho with 52.18. In last are Mississippi and Arkansas with a respective 4.96 and 5.97.
Delaware Patent King
In the business world, Delaware is the heartland of the patent venue of choice. A large number of companies incorporate there. Delaware’s favorable corporate laws leads many businesses’ to file their patents there since companies tend to apply for patents in the state in which they were incorporated. In recent years and not given justice on this map, Texas has caught up. Texas’ ‘open for business’ attitude is also changing where businesses choose to venue patent decisions.
Idaho Second
A big portion of the patenting activity in Idaho took place around the semiconductor and bio-agriculture industries. The state is home to Micron Technology and the Idaho National Laboratory. The Department of Energy owns the National Laboratory in Idaho. The Boise region hosts a large Hewlett-Packard plant responsible for a lot of patents.
