A record 409,532 patent applications were filed, and 165,485 patents were issued in 2005 according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Annual Report. Compared to 2004, this represents an 8.1% increase in filings, and an 11.6% decrease in issued patents (chart).

Expect to wait over two years for your patent to issue as the average total pendency (the time from when an application is filed until it is issued or abandoned by the applicant) was 29.1 months (in 2004 it was 27.6 months).

California led all other states with 48,568 patent applications filed, followed by Texas with 12,951, and then New York with 12,521 applications.

More than four out of every ten patent applications were filed by residents of foreign countries, 184,380 in total. Japan led all other countries with 65,025 applications, more than three times as many as the next two countries, Germany (18,245) and Taiwan (16,865).

The USPTO has a lot of work to do to encourage electronic filing; only 2.2% of patent applications were filed electronically in 2005.

2,701 people took the Patent Bar Exam; 1,442 of them passed and became registered to practice before the USPTO.

On the litigation front, 2,115 notices of suit were filed, eleven cases were filed in United States District Courts, forty-three in United States Courts of Appeals (Federal Circuit and others), and three in the United States Supreme Court.

Some other interesting statistics:

* The USPTO workforce is comprised of 7,363 federal employees, including 4,258 patent examiners and 357 trademark examining attorneys, and 3,687 contract employees. The USPTO hired a record 978 patent examiners, and plans to hire approximately 1,000 new examiners over the next year.

* The USPTO received 46,926 PCT applications in 2005.

* Average first action pendency was 21.1 months, up from last year’s 20.2 months.

* The average pendency for interferences is less than twelve months.

* The USPTO published 291,221 pending applications as provided for in the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) of 1999.

* The USPTO received 111,753 provisional applications in 2005.

* Earned revenue for the USPTO totaled $1,372.8 million for FY 2005, an increase of $133.8 million, or 10.8 percent, over FY 2004 earned.

* Total appeals decided - 2,937; Affirmed - 1,121; Affirmed-in-part - 366; Reversed - 1,163; Dismissed or Withdrawn – 111; Remanded – 176