This week at Patexia, our Data Science Team investigated third quarter changes in the number of registered patent practitioners. Examining data from the USPTO Practitioner Roster, we saw that at the end of the second quarter, there were 44,424 registered patent practitioners. With another 337 registered patent practitioners added to the ranks during the third quarter, we currently have 44,761 registered patent practitioners. This represented a 3% annualized growth and a 0.75% quarterly growth during the third quarter.

While there was overall growth in the IP legal sector, not all law firms increased their number of patent practitioners. The following chart visualizes the top 10 law firms with the largest growth and decline in their number of patent practitioners.

We limited our analysis to those firms with 50 or more patent practitioners. The biggest gainer was Cooley LLP, which added 19 new patent practitioners. The most notable decline occurred at Kenyon & Kenyon, where the law firm lost 13 patent practitioners and eventually closed. The remaining attorneys ended up joining the Texas law firm, Andrews Kurth.

The following table provides the actual number of patent practitioners for the end of the second and third quarters, as well as distinguishes between the number of patent agents and attorneys. During the third quarter, patent agents and attorneys grew by annualized rates of 4.4 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. Additionally, the 3:1 ratio between patent attorneys and patent agents that existed at the conclusion of the second quarter remained effectively unchanged for the third quarter.

	Attorneys	Agents	All Practitioners
Q2	33,313	11,111	44,424
Q3	33,529	11,232	44,761
Net Change	216	121	337

To see how others did during the third quarter, the following table shows the changes of registered patent practitioners among the top 25 law firms. The source of data was the office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) at the USPTO. Interestingly, the top 25 are unchanged but in terms of ranking there was some shuffling.

Q3 Rank	Firm	Q2 Rank	Practitioners
1	Fish & Richardson	2	270
2	Finnegan	1	265
3	Knobbe Martens	3	260
4	Kilpatrick Townsend	4	215
5	Foley & Lardner	5	168
6	Wilson Sonsini	6	168
7	Perkins Coie	7	143
8	Cooley	14	142
9	Schwegman Lundberg	9	141
10	Baker Botts	8	140
11	Jones Day	11	136
12	Morrison & Foerster	10	132
13	Brinks Gilson	15	123
14	Oblon McClelland	12	121
15	Sterne Kessler	13	119
16	Alston & Bird	17	112
17	Harness Dickey & Pierce	18	109
18	McDermott Will & Emery	16	109
19	Morgan Lewis & Bockius	19	109
20	McDonnell Boehnen	20	105
21	Haynes & Boone	22	104
22	Kirkland & Ellis	21	102
23	K & L Gates	24	102
24	Cantor Colburn	25	102
25	Ropes & Gray	23	94

In terms of USPTO registration, there were 391 new patent practitioners from which 163 were attorneys and 228 were agents. There were also 54 registered patent practitioners that were removed (retired) from the USPTO’s list of registered patent practitioners. This means the net change for the quarter was addition of 337 patent practitioners. During the same period, 1,234 patent practitioners changed firms which is equivalent to annualized 11 percent rate for lateral moves.

This third quarter growth represents a promising step toward meeting the demand for patent professionals. As you may recall from our earlier article in July that not only is there a shortage of patent attorneys, but the number of applications filed has risen. There has also been a large rise in patent litigation, although this trend has slowed substantially in 2016. If the above trends continue, we are annually adding about 3.5 percent new patent practitioners while about 0.5 percent are retiring each year.

The Patexia’s Data Science Team has been gathering data from over 300 million USPTO transaction records, with a focus on the allowance rate for patent applications. Over the next few weeks, we hope to release data identifying the top examiners with the highest and lowest allowance rates.