Top Patent Firms | 2020 Rankings

There are a lot of "best in legal" awards – but not many backed by data

Some awards recognize firms based on staff size or volume of work. Others are based on client satisfaction. And let’s face it, some are won after paying a hefty entry fee. But there aren't enough based on data.

Backed by our industry-leading patent database, Juristat's 2020 Top Patent Firms rankings are based solely on performance metrics.

Our database of more than 10 million pending, abandoned, and granted patent applications allows us to objectively analyze the performance of every law firm practicing within the USPTO – no call for participation or entry fees required.

How our rankings work

We know that each technology center presents its own unique set of challenges. And, perhaps more importantly, we know that firm expertise in a specific field is often more sought after than general aptitude. And so, rather than ranking firm performance across the entire USPTO, we narrowed in on each tech center to find the best of the best within each particular area.

Juristat's rankings considers both volume and performance in that specific technology center. We based the rankings on how well a firm performed in three key metrics over a 12-month period. These metrics are:

Number of applications filed
Allowance rate
Average number of office actions before allowance

This analysis was conducted between November 2020 and January 2021, and analyzed public applications disposed (or in the case of the first metric, applications filed) between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2018. To qualify for inclusion, a firm must have filed a minimum of 100 applications in the tech center during that time period. This ensures the firm has extensive experience in that technology center and provides an appropriate-sized dataset the evaluate performance metrics. For our analysis, we attributed applications to the firm listed on the application at the time of disposition. We also excluded foreign priority applications and design applications from this analysis.

We narrowed the field in each technology center by first identifying the top ten firms in each of three categories – allowance rate, average office actions before allowance, and volume of applications filed. As you look at each tech center’s rankings, you see the the top ten in each of those three key metrics, as well as our overall ranking – the Juristat Rank. This overall rank was calculated by taking into account the firm’s rank for the key metric, as well as rewarding firms who ranked for more than one category. This gives us a better picture of which firms have the most well-rounded performance in each tech center. Read more in our FAQs.

A caveat, of course. This method is but one way to measure a firm’s performance and is not intended to be definitive. In fact, you should not rely solely on a firm’s filing volume, allowance rate, or number of office actions as a measure of success - as that doesn’t necessarily account for patent quality. Beyond that, many clients value timeliness, communication, retention of top talent, or adoption of new technologies – more qualitative measures we can’t yet analyze with data.

Additionally, these rankings represent a snapshot of performance at the time of analysis. This analysis of public applications was conducted between November 2020-January 2021. Make sure you have the most up-to-date performance metrics by subscribing to Juristat.