Solo Patent Attorneys and Agents
Far fewer than the roster suggests, and a small number of them do most of the work. Of 54,221 registered US patent practitioners, 24,913 list a firm of one. Following their filings rather than their roster entry, 2,521 actually file as a solo practice. Within those, the top 10% make 68.2% of all solo filings.
A practitioner's roster entry says what they call their practice. It does not say whether they file alone. These two questions give different answers, and the gap between them is most of this page.
The roster is today's, read backwards. A practitioner who left the register before 31 October 2026 is not in any figure on this page, however much they filed.
What the roster field predicts
The firm field is a weak signal, but it is not nothing.
How concentrated solo filing is
Counting only the 2,521 who do file as a solo practice, the distribution is steep.
The largest band is described as accounts with one registered practitioner of record, not as one person's work. A single registered name on a filing is not proof of a one-person practice, and at these volumes it is unlikely to be one.
Where the volume sits, year by year
| Year | 1 to 9 | 10 to 49 | 50 to 249 | 250 or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 3.1% | 12.7% | 35.1% | 49.1% |
| 2021 | 2.0% | 11.1% | 33.0% | 53.8% |
| 2022 | 1.7% | 9.9% | 32.8% | 55.7% |
| 2023 | 1.5% | 8.9% | 29.4% | 60.3% |
| 2024 | 1.3% | 8.0% | 27.9% | 62.9% |
| 2025 | 1.0% | 7.6% | 28.8% | 62.6% |
| 2026 | 1.1% | 9.5% | 30.7% | 58.7% |
| Year | Solo practices | Applications | Share of all filings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 1,984 | 33,875 | 5.5% |
| 2021 | 1,914 | 34,767 | 5.6% |
| 2022 | 1,823 | 32,692 | 5.2% |
| 2023 | 1,756 | 33,801 | 5.4% |
| 2024 | 1,649 | 34,620 | 5.6% |
| 2025 (floor) | 1,416 | 23,703 | 5.0% |
| 2026 (floor) | 802 | 4,403 | 4.1% |
Who they are and where
Nothing on this page grades, ranks or identifies any practitioner. Every figure is a count or a share of a group, the smallest group reported is 30, and no maximum, individual value or per-practitioner point appears anywhere.
Our own counts from the USPTO roster and the Open Data Portal. These describe what the public record shows about past filings. They say nothing about any particular practitioner, they are associations rather than causes, and none of this is legal advice.
The figures on this page are available as a CSV: /data/solo-patent-attorneys-and-agents.csv. It is generated from the tables and charts above, so it carries the same numbers and cannot fall out of step with them.