hearings of that Committee, in Part 3: Patents, pages 845-848 and exhibits 183-191 on pages 1125-1129. Essentially the figures were obtained by counting all the patents issued to each corporation, on an annual basis, for the years 1931-37, and for the first half of the year 1938. The counting was done from the same cumulative index of patentees used here, as it then existed. The period chosen for the actual count of patents is explained by the fact that this cumulative index was started in 1931. For the years prior to 1931, in order to extend some of the data to include 17 years, samples, interpolations, and other methods of estimating were used.

Table 5 is an arrangement of some of the prior data for the years 1936, 1937, and 1938 (for the latter year the percentages obtained from the count for the first 6 months were applied to the patents issued during the entire year). The percentage of patents issued to the selected group of corporations varies little during these 3 years, and the other data also vary only a little in percentage from the percentages for the entire 3 years.

TABLE 5.-Patents issued to corporations, 1936-38

The large corporations in that study were corporations with assets of over $50 million. The basic list used was a list of industrial corporations with total assets of $50 million and over, compiled by the Federal Trade Commission in 1938. This list contained 178 names, but only 151 were "industrial corporations" as the term is used in the recent list published by Fortune magazine, the others being trade and service companies. Hence the group of large corporations of the 1938 study included the top 151 industrial corporations plus the companies in other categories in the same asset range to which any patents were issued. The total number of corporations in the group considered, to which patents had been issued, was 157. Patents issued to subsidiaries of these companies were added to the patents

This list was published in Federal Licensing of Corporations, hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U. S. Senate, 75th Cong., pt. 4, March 1938, pp. 786–792. 7 See footnote 5, supra.

STNEC hearings, pt. 3, exhibits 183, 184, p. 1125.

issued to the parent companies in obtaining the data repeated in the first line of table 5.o

7. ANNUAL NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF PATENTS ISSUED TO CORPORATIONS, 1936-55

Some figures which were already on hand, relating to the number of patents issued annually to corporations, have been augmented and arranged for inclusion in this report. The annual tables presented are for the years 1936-55, inclusive, the 3 years 1936-38 having been added to make an even 20-year period; the figures in these tables are partly estimates.

Table 6 lists the total number of patents (excluding reissues and design and plant patents) issued annually in each of the 20 years covered, the number issued to United States corporations, the number issued to foreign corporations, the total issued to corporations, the number issued to individuals, and the number issued to the United States Government (excluding the Alien Property Custodian; patents issued to the Alien Property Custodian are included in the patents issued column but have not been separately listed).

Table 7 lists the annual percentages of the data given in columns 2 to 6 of table 6.

The data published in the TNEC hearings comprised nine tables and charts, exhibits 183 to 191, pp. 1125 to 1129, with a small amount of discussion during the oral hearing, pp. 845-848.

Exhibits 183 and 184 are charts showing the annual number and percentage of patents issued to the group of 157 large corporations (including subsidiaries) for the years 1921-38.

Exhibit 185 is a chart showing the number of patents issued per each $1 billion of their total assets, to the group of 157 large corporations, for each of the years 1921-37. It was criticized during the hearings (pp. 845, 846) as having no particular meaning since large companies with only 1 or 2 patents would be included.

Exhibits 186 and 187 are charts showing the annual number and percentage of patents issued to all corporations and to foreign corporations, and also repeating the curves of exhibits 183 and 184; except for the noninclusion of data of this latter type, figures 3 and 4 of the present study are similar to these exhibits. Exhibit 188 is a diagram showing the number of patents issued from January 1, 1931, to June 30, 1938, which were acquired from individuals after issuance by the three groups of corporations (the 157 large corporations, other United States corporations, and foreign corporations) during this period.

Exhibits 189 and 190 are tables which, taken together, are similar in form to table 4 of the present report. The data are not comparable, however, since in exhibits 189 and 190 the patents of subsidiaries were not combined with the parent corporations and the numbers are not only patents issued to the corporations but an estimate of the total number of patents owned by them, the number of patents issued (which was estimated) having been increased by a factor to obtain an estimate of the number of patents owned by the corporations in the various groups.

Exhibit 191 is a detail table showing the number of corporations receiving only 1 to 8 patents during the 71⁄2 years of the count.

It does not appear that any explanatory written report was prepared in 1938. Some details regarding the study which have been referred to in the present report were obtained from a few internal memorandums which have been found.

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TABLE 7.-Annual percentage of patents issued to corporations

The data presented in these tables were obtained in the following manner. The number and percentage of patents issued to corporations in the 3 years 1936, 1937, and 1938 are from the study made in 1938. See table 5. The number and percentage for 1955 were obtained by counting the patents issued to corporations for the entire year, in the Index of Patentees for 1955. For the intervening years, 1939-54, the number and percentage of patents issued to corporations were estimated by counting the patents (from the Official Gazette) issued to corporations for a full month at 6-month intervals. That

is, a sample of 2 months' patents, January and July, was taken each year and the estimates for each year calculated from these samples. The numbers of patents to the United States Government for each. year were taken from an index of Government-owned patents (excluding the Alien Property Custodian; an annual tabulation of patents issued to the Alien Property Custodian is not separately listed in these tables).

Some of the data tabulated in tables 6 and 7 are shown graphically in figures 3 and 4. The upper heavy line in figure 3 represents the total number of patents issued annually. The next line represents the number of patents issued annually to all corporations and the line below this one represents the number of patents issued annually to United States corporations; the difference between these two lines represents the number of patents issued annually to foreign corporations. The difference between the upper two lines represents the patents issued to individuals except for those issued to the United States Government and the Alien Property Custodian which are not indicated in the figure. Figure 4 corresponds to figure 3, giving the percentages for each year.

Looking at the percentage curves, it will be noted that while there are some variations in the percentages of patents issued to corporations over the 20-year period, no significant trend for the entire period is indicated. The average percentage of patents to all corporations for the 20-year period is 58.37 percent, and of patents to United States corporations is 53.93 percent. Straight lines fitted to the points of each curve by the method of least squares are nearly horizontal, sloping downward by about 1 percent in the entire 20-year period in each case. The largest deviation above the average line, for either curve, is the rise occurring from 1941 to 1946. This rise in percentage of patents to corporations appears during the period when the number of patents issued to corporations and the total number of patents issued annually was declining due to the decline in the number of applications filed during the war years. The rise in the percentage of patents to corporations during the period of diminishing filing of applications and issuance of patents indicates that the causes of the decrease in filings and issuances affected the individual inventors to a somewhat greater extent than they affected the corporations. The sharp drop in the proportion of patents to corporations occurring after 1946 clearly suggests that the preceding increase was an effect of the war. The decrease, obviously caused by the war, and subsequent increase of both the number and proportion of patents issued to foreign corporations is apparent in both figures.