# US Patent costs

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 6, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113 "2003-02-06T02:43:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![insider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@insider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insider)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113/1 "2003-02-06T02:43:46Z")

</div>

How much does the average US Patent cost? How long does a Patent last? Who holds the current record for the most US Patents?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2003, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113/2 "2003-02-06T03:55:58Z")

</div>

Fees: [http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/index.html](http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/index.html)

Length: [http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/helpfaq.htm#a17](http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/helpfaq.htm#a17)

Most: Per year, IBM traditionally dominates, pulling in about 2800 patents in 2000.

Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents… I don’t know if that is the record or not.

For normal people, Kodak seems proud of their engineers and scientists with 100 patents…

[http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/achievements/prolificInventors.shtml](http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/achievements/prolificInventors.shtml)

Or more general information:

[http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/helpfaq.htm](http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/helpfaq.htm)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2003, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113/3 "2003-02-06T04:10:37Z")

</div>

Edison still had the record for an invidual as of 1999, according to [this statement](http://www.ogc.doc.gov/ogc/legreg/testimon/106f/dickinson0112.htm) before a Senate Committee.

[All of Edison’s patents](http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm). He also had 1,239 non-U.S. patents.

John Hays Hammond, Jr is supposedly second most prolific, with 437 patents.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Pencil\_Pusher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Pencil\_Pusher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pencil_Pusher)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2003, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113/4 "2003-02-06T04:59:26Z")

</div>

I generally charge in the $10k/patent area for corporate clients with a large stream of business and who patents things in the same field (very little learning curve from one patent to the next). I might charge as much as double for a one-shot inventor or company. That is normally only work up to the initial filing. Expect the application to sit with the PTO for a year or three. Once they get around to it, it will cost a couple of thousand for each back-and-forth between us and the PTO.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-patent-costs/153113/5 "2003-02-10T23:38:37Z")

</div>

Does that include the fees to the government? Or is it just your time?