# S&P 500 companies received 29% fewer US patents in 2025 than in 2019

Published 2026-11-07 · By Pushbuild · Data: [Patents by Ticker API – Patent Grant Pace and 13F Holders](https://pushbuild.com/apis/patents-by-ticker.html)

**500**S&P · as of 2026-11-07

**Today's S&P 500 companies were granted 54,171 US patents in 2025, against 76,229 in 2019. IBM alone accounts for 7,212 of the 22,058 fewer grants; without IBM the drop is 22%.**

All S&P 500IBMAll except IBM

“The Open Data Portal (ODP) is USPTO's data platform that empowers you to discover and easily extract USPTO data in one place for free.”

— [USPTO Open Data Portal](https://data.uspto.gov/)

| Year | All S&P 500 | IBM | All except IBM |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2017 | 70,300 | 9,359 | 60,941 |
| 2018 | 66,151 | 9,240 | 56,911 |
| 2019 | 76,229 | 9,526 | 66,703 |
| 2020 | 75,459 | 9,429 | 66,030 |
| 2021 | 67,239 | 8,892 | 58,347 |
| 2022 | 60,830 | 4,763 | 56,067 |
| 2023 | 61,088 | 3,982 | 57,106 |
| 2024 | 57,021 | 2,649 | 54,372 |
| 2025 | 54,171 | 2,314 | 51,857 |

## Caveats

USPTO grants counted under each company's current and former SEC names and patent-holding subsidiaries, as applicant or as assignee in an ownership transfer (security interests excluded), read November 7, 2026. Companies are today's S&P 500 members, so the history follows today's index, not the index of each year; Alphabet's two share classes count once. Grants lag filings by two to three years, so a fall in grants partly reflects filing decisions made around 2020 to 2023. CSV: [sp500-patent-grants-by-year.csv](data:text/csv;base64,eWVhcixzcDUwMENvbXBhbmllcyxhbGxHcmFudHMsaWJtR3JhbnRzLGFsbEV4Y2VwdElibQ0KMjAxNyw1MDAsNzAzMDAsOTM1OSw2MDk0MQ0KMjAxOCw1MDAsNjYxNTEsOTI0MCw1NjkxMQ0KMjAxOSw1MDAsNzYyMjksOTUyNiw2NjcwMw0KMjAyMCw1MDAsNzU0NTksOTQyOSw2NjAzMA0KMjAyMSw1MDAsNjcyMzksODg5Miw1ODM0Nw0KMjAyMiw1MDAsNjA4MzAsNDc2Myw1NjA2Nw0KMjAyMyw1MDAsNjEwODgsMzk4Miw1NzEwNg0KMjAyNCw1MDAsNTcwMjEsMjY0OSw1NDM3Mg0KMjAyNSw1MDAsNTQxNzEsMjMxNCw1MTg1Nw0K)

## Sources

- [USPTO Open Data Portal](https://data.uspto.gov/), read through the Pushbuild [Patents by Ticker API](https://pushbuild.com/apis/patents-by-ticker.html) on 2026-11-07
- [SEC Form 13F data sets](https://www.sec.gov/data-research/sec-markets-data/form-13f-data-sets), read through the Pushbuild [Patents by Ticker API](https://pushbuild.com/apis/patents-by-ticker.html) on 2026-11-07

Data as of 2026-11-07. Every figure in this post is in the table above and the CSV below.

Download the data behind this post: [b5-sp500-patent-grants-by-year.csv](https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/data/b5-sp500-patent-grants-by-year.csv)

## Get this data

Every number in this post comes from the [Patents by Ticker API – Patent Grant Pace and 13F Holders](https://pushbuild.com/apis/patents-by-ticker.html). $0.0040 per row returned; every key gets $1 of free usage each month.

```
curl -X POST https://api.pushbuild.com/patents-by-ticker/run \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ticker": "NVDA", "maxItems": 20}'
```

[API docs and key](https://pushbuild.com/apis/patents-by-ticker.html)[More analysis from this data](https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/api/patents-by-ticker/)Embed this chart

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Header photo: [Unknown author](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Model_of_Edison_laboratory_at_Menlo_Park._(9ef4c2cfa2be4a518ae18ad6f88206e6).jpg), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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As of 2026-11-07. Source: https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/sp500-patent-grants-decline-2019-2025/