Reinventing Manufacturing

California’s Shifting Landscape: Manufacturing and the Innovation Ecosystem
Patent Activity
Patents registered to California inventors represented
approximately 10 percent of total US patent registrations
in 2013. A total of 36,193 patents were registered
to primary inventors located in California; this number
has increased by a factor of four since 1990. Thirty-one
percent of those patents are registered in the Computers,
Data Processing, and Information Storage field,
which has produced an average annual growth rate of
15.2 percent. This category includes computer hardware
as well as code and methodology for data processing
and storage. Other sectors have also grown quickly,
including Communications and Health, which have
experienced annual growth rates of 13.5 percent and
9.4 percent, respectively. The number of Transportation/
Vehicles patents, another high growth area in manufacturing,
has also been rising. Together, these four categories
made up nearly three-quarters of the state’s patent
activity in 2013.
California’s patent registration growth relates closely
to the state’s strong manufacturing activity. California
ranks second (following Michigan) in the number of
patent registrations in the category of Manufacturing,
Assembling, & Treating. While overall patent registrations
within California in this category declined by more
than 40 percent between 2006 and 2009 (in line with a
broader downturn in patent activity), patent registrations
began to ramp back up starting in 2010.
California’s patent activity is highly concentrated in the
Bay Area. With 153,436 registered patents, or 61.3
percent of all California patent activity, the Bay Area
has registered more patents between 2004 and 2013
than all other regions combined. This large share of
patents in the Bay Area is due to the region’s specialization
in the largest seven patent categories in the state.
No other single region has registered more than half of
the patents in any category, but other regions do show
pockets of concentration.
Annual California Patent Registrations by Category, 1990–2013
40,000 Other
Food, Plant & Animal Husbandry
35,000
Dispensing & Material Handling
Furniture & Receptacles
30,000
Construction & Building Materials
Transportation/Vehicles
25,000
Manufacturing, Assembling, & Treating
Teaching & Amusement Devices
20,000
Chemical Processing Technologies
Chemical & Organic
15,000
Compounds/Materials
Measuring, Testing & Precision
10,000
Instruments
Electricity & Heating/Cooling
5,000
Health
Communications
0
Computers, Data Processing &
Information Storage
Note: Patents are reported if the first named inventor was located in California. “Other” includes Apparel, Textiles & Body Adornment,
Ammunition & Weapons, Nuclear Technology, and Superconducting Technology
Data Source: US Patent and Trademark Office
Analysis: Bay Area Council Economic Institute
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