Patent application submitted by individual inventors
Published 26 February 2025
© Crown copyright 2025
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/patent-application-submitted-by-individual-inventors/patent-application-submitted-by-individual-inventors
Date of release:
18 January 2024
Request:
I was wondering if you had any data available on the number of patent applications submitted by individual inventors each year?
We are trying to understand the trends to see if this figure is rising, falling or staying relatively static.
We found a graph on page 21 of one of your documents (The changing profile of users of the UK patent system – August 2021) that seems to suggest that “Individual” inventors are on the decline up to 2018 and we would like to understand if this is still the case.
Also, the graph states “Individual” but from my research I understand that you only classify by represented and unrepresented applicants. Could you confirm this? And what “Individual” in the graph is referring to?
Information released:
Please see the below charts which are updated versions of the chart shown on pages 21 and 22 of the report you linked to. The data is limited to include those application filed up to 2020. This is because it relates to published applications only and the most recent version of Patstat was released in the autumn of 2023, so 2020 is the most recent completed year.
Figure 1: Composition of IPO applications from portfolios with size 1 by applicant type. “Unknown” type is used where detailed data is not yet available (Figure 11 in referenced report)
Figure 2: Composition of IPO applications by main applicant type. Small contribution by other applicant types have been removed (Figure 12 in referenced report)
The categories used are determined by the European Patent Office and is part of their name harmonisation efforts. Further details on the Data Catalog PATSTAT Global website . The UNKNOWN and blanks are grouped together. As with the referenced reports the smaller categories have not been included.
Other publications from the UK office may classify based on represented or unrepresented. In these cases this is a determination made by the IPO.