The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington County, Virginia.
The USPTO is "unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars". Its "operating structure is like a business in that it receives requests for services—applications for patents and trademark registrations—and charges fees projected to cover the cost of performing the services [it] provide[s]".
The office is headed by the under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. , John A. Squires is the undersecretary and director, having been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as part of an en bloc vote.
The USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO is also a Receiving Office, an International Searching Authority and an International Preliminary Examination Authority for international patent applications filed in accordance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
Mission The legal basis for the United States patent system is the Copyright Clause in Section 8 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights on a national basis. Trademark law, on the other hand, is considered to be authorized by the Commerce Clause. The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. The USPTO maintains a permanent, interdisciplinary historical record of all U.S. patent applications in order to fulfill objectives outlined in the United States Constitution. The PTO's mission is to promote "industrial and technological progress in the United States and strengthen the national economy" by: Administering the laws relating to patents and trademarks; Advising the secretary of commerce, the president of the United States, and the administration on patent, trademark, and copyright protection; and Providing advice on the trade-related aspects of intellectual property.
Structure The USPTO is headquartered at the Alexandria Campus, consisting of 4 buildings in a city-like development surrounded by ground floor retail and high rise residential buildings between the Metro stations of King Street station (the main search building is two blocks due south of the King Street station) and Eisenhower Avenue station where the actual Alexandria Campus is located between Duke Street (on the North) to Eisenhower Avenue (on the South), and between John Carlyle Street (on the East) to Elizabeth Lane (on the West) in Alexandria, Virginia.
The USPTO was expected by 2014 to open its first ever satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, and Silicon Valley to reduce backlog and reflect regional industrial strengths. The first satellite office opened in Detroit on July 13, 2012. In 2013, due to the budget sequestration, the satellite office for Silicon Valley, which is home to one of the nation's top patent-producing cities, was put on hold. However, renovation and infrastructure updates continued after the sequestration, and the Silicon Valley location opened in the San Jose City Hall in 2015.
In 2024, the USPTO reduced its leased space in Alexandria, pointing to its increasingly remote work force and cost savings initiatives. The Alexandria campus no longer includes the Remsen and Randolph buildings, nor the Elizabeth Townhouse and West Garage. In November 2025, the U.S. General Services Administration and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the new NSF headquarters will be located at the Randolph building that the USPTO has vacated.
On October 1, 2025, the USPTO announced plans to close the Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office in Denver.
, the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year, the PTO had 9,716 employees, nearly all of whom are based at its five-building headquarters complex in Alexandria. Of those, 6,242 were patent examiners (almost all of whom were assigned to examine utility patents; only 99 were assigned to examine design patents) and 388 were trademark examining attorneys; the rest are support staff. While the agency has noticeably grown in recent years, the rate of growth was far slower in fiscal 2009 than in the recent past; this is borne out by data from fiscal 2005 to the present: As of the end of FY 2018, the USPTO was composed of 12,579 federal employees, including 8,185 patent examiners, 579 trademark examiners, and 3,815 other staff.
At end of FY Employees Patent examiners Trademark examining attorneys Patent filings (utility) Trademark filings Patent application backlog 2024 14,082 8,944 765 466,079 767,138 2023 13,452 8,568 756 594,143 737,018 2022 13,103 8,509 718 457,510 787,798 2021 12,963 8,073 662 650,703 943,928 2020 12,928 8,434 622 653,311 738,112 2019 12,652 9,614 701 666,843 673,233 2018 12,579 8,185 579 647,572 594,107 2017 12,588 8,147 549 650,350 530,270 526,579 2016 12,725 8,351 570 650,411 530,270 537,655 2015 12,667 9,161 456 618,062 503,889 553,221 2014 12,450 9,302 429 618,457 455,017 2013 11,773 8,051 409 601,464 433,654 2012 11,531 7,935 386 565,406 415,026 608,283 2011 10,210 6,780 378 536,604 398,667 2010 9,507 6,225 378 509,367 368,939 726,331 2009 9,716 6,243 388 485,500 352,051 750,596 2008 9,518 6,055 398 495,095 401,392 750,596 2007 8,913 5,477 404 467,243 394,368 2006 4,779 413 2005 4,177 357 2004 3,681 286 2003 3,579 256 1998 5,300 1996 189,979 200,640 1995 221,304 175,307 1994 186,126 155,376 1993 174,553 139,735 1992 172,539 125,237 1986 120,988 69,253 1976 101,807 37,074
Patent examiners make up the bulk of the employees at USPTO. They hold degrees in various scientific disciplines, but do not necessarily hold law degrees. Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners must be licensed attorneys.
All examiners work under a strict, "count"-based production system. For every application, "counts" are earned by composing, filing, and mailing a first office action on the merits, and upon disposal of an application.
Prior to 2012, decisions of patent examiners could be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, an administrative law body of the USPTO. Decisions of the BPAI could further be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or a civil suit could be brought against the Commissioner of Patents in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.35 U.S.C. § 145. The United States Supreme Court may ultimately decide on a patent case. Under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was converted to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or "PTAB". Similarly, decisions of trademark examiners could be appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with subsequent appeals directed to the Federal Circuit, or a civil action may also be brought.
Management In March 2025, President Donald Trump nominated attorney John A. Squires, the former chief intellectual property attorney at Goldman Sachs, to serve as the USPTO director. He was sworn in on September 22, 2025. Coke Morgan Stewart, who served as Acting Director until Squires was sworn in, serves as the deputy director of the USPTO.
Fee diversion For many years, Congress has "diverted" about 10% of the fees that the USPTO collected into the general treasury of the United States. In effect, this took money collected from the patent system to use for the general budget. This fee diversion has been generally opposed by patent practitioners (e.g., patent attorneys and patent agents), inventors, the USPTO, as well as former federal judge Paul R. Michel.Interview With Chief Judge Paul R. Michel On U.S. Patent Reform , Intellectual Property Watch, July 19, 2011. Consulted on August 8, 2011. These stakeholders would rather use the funds to improve the patent office and patent system, such as by implementing the USPTO's 21st Century Strategic Plan. The last six annual budgets of the George W. Bush administration did not propose to divert any USPTO fees, and the first budget of the Barack Obama administration continued this practice, as well as the second budget of the Trump administration; however, stakeholders continue to press for a permanent end to fee diversion.
The discussion of which party can appropriate the fees is more than a financial question. Patent fees represent a policy lever that influences both the number of applications submitted to the office as well as their quality.
Patents
On July 31, 1790, the first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process". This patent was signed by President George Washington. The X-Patents (the first 9,957 (approximately), issued between 1790 and 1836) were destroyed by a fire; fewer than 3,000 of those have been recovered and re-issued with numbers that include an "X". The X generally appears at the end of the numbers hand-written on full-page patent images; however, in patent collections and for search purposes, the X is considered to be the patent type – analogous to the "D" of design patents – and appears at the beginning of the number. The X distinguishes the patents from those issued after the fire, which began again with patent number 1. Each year, the PTO issues over 150,000 patents to companies and individuals worldwide. , the PTO had granted 8,743,423 patents and received 16,020,302 applications. On June 19, 2018, the 10 millionth U.S. patent was issued to Joseph Marron for invention of a "Coherent LADAR [System] Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection" to improve laser detection and ranging (LADAR). The patent was the first to receive the newly redesigned patent cover. It was signed by President Donald Trump during a special ceremony at the Oval Office. In February 2024, the USPTO issued a new guideline relating to obtaining a patent as per earlier recommendation by the Joe Biden administration. The guideline states that; to obtain a patent, a real person, not AI, must have made a "significant contribution" to the invention and that only a human being can be named as an inventor on a patent.
List of millionth U.S. patents + Patents issued under the revised numbering scheme of the Patent Act of 1836 Patent number Patent title Issue date Days since preceding millionth issue 1 Traction Wheels July 13, 1836 1,000,000 Vehicle Tire August 8, 1911 2,000,000 Vehicle Wheel Construction May 12, 1932 3,000,000 Automatic Reading System May 6, 1955 4,000,000 Process for Recycling Asphalt-Aggregate Compositions December 28, 1976 5,000,000 Ethanol Production by Escherichia Coli Strains March 19, 1991 6,000,000 Extendible Method and Apparatus for Synchronizing Multiple Files on Two Different Computer Systems December 7, 1999 7,000,000 Polysaccharide Fibers February 14, 2006 8,000,000 Visual Prosthesis August 16, 2011 9,000,000 Windshield Washer Conditioner April 7, 2015 10,000,000 Coherent Ladar Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection June 19, 2018 11,000,000 Repositioning Wires and Methods for Repositioning Prosthetic Heart Valve Devices within a Heart Chamber May 11, 2021 12,000,000 Labeled Nucleotide Analogs, Reaction Mixtures, and Methods and System for Sequencing June 4, 2024
Bar chart
Trademarks