In 2009, the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) issued 167,349 utility patents at an average rate of 3,218 per week. Since then, the PTO has significantly picked-up-the-pace. The chart below shows the average number of patents issued per week for January-April 2010. In April 2010, the USPTO issued an average of 4385 patents per week. The April figure represents a more-than 35% increase from the 2009 weekly average. If the April 2010 figures hold for the rest of 2010, we should expect about 220,000 issued utility patents for the year. That 50,000 year-to-year increase in patent grants for 2010 would represent the largest single-year jump in history.
