By Donald Zuhn --
Earlier this year, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) released its 28th annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. patents. As in past years, Patent Docs used the IPO's list of top patent holders to compile a list of the top "biotech and pharma" companies and organizations receiving U.S. patents in 2010 (see "IPO Releases List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2010"). As noted in the IPO's Top 300 list, 207,915 patents were issued in 2010, which constituted a 25.8% increase over the 165,213 patents that issued in 2009. The outlook was even brighter for the biotech/pharma industry, as 14,786 biotech/pharma patents were issued in 2010, which constituted a 38.9% increase over the 10,644 biotech/pharma patents that issued in 2009.
This increase in biotech/pharma patents is shown in the chart below, which also shows the number of biotech/pharma patents that issued between 2001 and 2011 (blue bars, left axis) and the number of biotech/pharma applications that published (red line, right axis) over this same time frame (note: figures for 2011 are projected based on issuances and publications through August 31).
In the chart above, the blue bars represent the number of patents designated as belonging to classes 424 (Drug, Bio-Affecting and Body Treating Compositions), 435 (Chemistry: Molecular Biology and Microbiology), 436 (Chemistry: Analytical and Immunological Testing), 504 (Plant Protecting and Regulating Compositions), 506 (Combinatorial Chemistry Technology: Method, Library, Apparatus), and/or 514 (Drug, Bio-Affecting and Body Treating Compositions) that issued in the specified year. The red line represents the number of patent applications designated as belonging to one of the above classes that published in the specified year (because the AIPA mandated publication of certain U.S. applications filed after November 28, 2000, only 3,920 biotech/pharma applications were published in 2001).
If the numbers through the end of August hold up during the remainder of the year, biotech/pharma patent issuances will rise to 14,889 in 2011, but published biotech/pharma applications will drop from 33,145 in 2010 to 30,582 (which would be the first drop in published biotech/pharma applications since 2007).
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