By Donald Zuhn --
Last week, we received a press release from PatentBuddy.com regarding
an analysis of employment statistics performed by the patent networking
website. PatentBuddy.com is an online database of patent attorneys and agents registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The website allows registered practitioners to create personal profiles providing information regarding their background, experience, areas of technical expertise, work product, and publications, and then network with other registered users.
In PatentBuddy.com's analysis, the site tracked the percent of new patent registrants between October 2007 and November 2008 that were affiliated with a corporation, affiliated with a law firm, or not affiliated with either a corporation or law firm. Over the six-month period from October 2007 to March 2008, PatentBuddy.com determined that there were 1,010 new patent registrants, of which 41.6% (420) were unaffiliated with a corporation or law firm, 50.0% (505) were affiliated with law firms, and 6.8% (69) were affiliated with corporations. Between April 2008 and November 2008, the distribution of new registrants was as follows:
Chart provided by PatentBuddy.com
Over the eight-month period ending November 2008, PatentBuddy.com determined that there were a total of 1,468 new patent registrants, of which 48.0% (705) were unaffiliated, 44.4% (651) were affiliated with law firms, and 7.6% (112) were affiliated with corporations. When comparing the two time periods, PatentBuddy.com's analysis shows a 7.4% rise in unaffiliated new registrants and a 5.6% drop in new registrants affiliated with law firms. These changes appear to be due to differences between unaffiliated registrants and law firm affiliated registrants in September and October of last year (i.e., the plots for each of these categories otherwise appear to be somewhat similar):
While economists now agree that the current recession began in December of 2007 (see New York Times report), the disconnect between unaffiliated registrants and law firm affiliated registrants in September and October may correlate with the country's recent recognition of the economic crisis. Patent practitioners will no doubt be keeping an eye on these numbers in the coming months.
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