TRENDS IN BIOENGINEERING PATENTS GRANTED 2000 - 2019

Patent documents contain a wealth of technical information on inventions, often unavailable elsewhere. They are likely underutilized as sources of information about trends in fields of development. Querying patent databases can be challenging, given the inadequacy of keywords and the complex nature of patent classification systems. A collection of Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) main codes were identified that likely relate to patents in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. These codes were used in queries of the free patent search engine that is available from a Lens.org database. Results were filtered for applications or granted patents by patent families to identify trends in inventions within the field from 2000 to 2019. A patent family represents the collection of documents relating to a single invention given that applications are frequently filed in multiple countries. Although patent applications and unique inventions remained steady, the annual number of patents granted has increased from 2000 to 2016. A decline in numbers of granted patents since 2016 is indicative of the lag time of several years between application filing and a determination of patent status. Applicants with high productivity in obtaining granted patents include large international companies as well as some large universities.