(Revised February 6 and 7, 2015 to correct a typographical error in two firm’s count of patents.)

Note:  You can also see the 2013 US Design Patent Toteboard and the 2012 US Design Patent Toteboard.

The USPTO issued 23657 design patents in 2014.  The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain these US design patents.  It ranks the firms according to the number of US design patents obtained.  Each firm was invited in early January 2015 to submit a simple online questionnaire.  The closing date for the questionnaires was January 31, 2015.

Each firm was asked to report only US design patents for which that firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.

Some twenty-nine firms responded, between them having obtained about 16% of all of the granted US design patents in 2014.  Some firms that had obtained significant numbers of US design patents in 2014, however, failed to respond despite reminders by email or telephone or both.  For such firms (denoted by an asterisk) we carried out our own database searches and arrived at numbers of patents and inserted those numbers into the table.  The resulting table accounts for 24% of all granted US design patents in 2014.

If you would like to be included in the US Design Patent Toteboard in future years, please subscribe to the Industrial Designs listserv at http://www.oppedahl.com/designs-l/ . When the online questionnaire for next year is made available, it will be announced on that listserv.

This table is provided by the Ant-Like Persistence blog.