AI Patents Changing Hands Between Companies (Monthly)

## What this measures

The number of AI-classified patents and applications on company-to-company assignment recordations in the month. Monthly, by the date the USPTO recorded it. Each recordation (one reel and frame at the USPTO) is classed by its conveyance text: security interest, release, merger, change of name or address, licence, government interest, correction, or assignment. An assignment is "inventor to company" when every assignor is a person (a name written "SURNAME, GIVEN" with no company word or legal form such as L.L.C.), and "company to company" when every assignor and the receiving party are organizations. An assignment from companies to a lender's agent ("as collateral agent") counts as a security interest, since the lender holds the patents as collateral. A company-to-company transfer is "intra-group" when both sides share their leading name (Microsoft Corporation to Microsoft Technology Licensing); "unrelated companies" leaves those out. Corrective recordations are not counted, because they fix an earlier one. A property is one patent or application listed on the recordation. A property is AI-classified when its application carries any CPC symbol in G06N (computing arrangements based on specific computational models: machine learning, neural networks, knowledge-based systems), matched by application number against the USPTO Open Data Portal's list of G06N applications.

## Why it matters

It shows how much machine-learning intellectual property is being bought, sold and consolidated.

## How to read it

The series starts in January 1981 at 0. The latest reading, for May 2026, is 296. The high is 675 (August 2024) and the low 0 (January 1981). The high and low leave out the newest month. Months swing with single large portfolio deals, so read a trend over a year.

## What it does not say

Recordation is voluntary but protects the buyer, so most transfers are recorded; the date is the day the USPTO received the document (37 CFR 3.51), often weeks or months after the deal. Recordations then reach the data weeks to months later: of those received from March 2026, about half were in the data within a week and nine in ten within 20 weeks. So a month prints only once four more months have passed, and recent months can still rise a little as late recordations arrive (the last twelve months are recomputed every day). Old recordations can be updated later (a grant adds a patent number), and the counts use each recordation's current version. Names are as filed: the rules cannot see that a holding company belongs to a larger group unless the names share a leading word. CPC is the current classification, so older patents count where they sit today; G06N misses AI patents classed only elsewhere (for example image recognition in G06V).

## Source

Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office, www.uspto.gov. Patent Assignment XML (Ownership) Text from the USPTO Open Data Portal: the annual backfile (recordations from August 1980 to 9 April 2026) and the daily files after it. Public domain. The classification (who is on each side of a transfer, which transfers stay inside one group, and which properties are AI) is Palanor's; the rules are in the methodology above.