The Fastest-Growing Patent Law Firms of the Past Decade

A decade is long enough to test a patent firm. The last one handed the profession the America Invents Act, the Supreme Court's Alice decision and the long scramble to prosecute around it, a pandemic, and a client base now moving quickly to adopt AI tools. The firms that grew through all of it did something harder than get lucky.

To find the fastest-growing patent law firms, we measured the change in USPTO utility and plant application volume from 2015 to 2024. We limited the analysis to medium-to-large firms, those filing more than 250 applications a year, that were active in both years. Design patents, reissues, reexaminations, and provisionals were excluded. The ranking reflects filing volume at the USPTO, so it includes firms that file primarily on behalf of foreign applicants; we did not exclude them. Growth compares 2015 and 2024 filings, while the prosecution figures later in this post, allowance rate and time to disposition, come from a separate 2020 cohort of these same firms, because applications filed in 2024 have not finished prosecuting.

Growth is not only new filings. Several firms on this list expanded through mergers and acquisitions as much as through organic work, which reshapes a book of business quickly. Volume is also not the same as quality, a distinction that matters more now than it did ten years ago.

Filing counts are easy to pull. What separates a firm that is growing from a firm that is growing well is the prosecution record underneath the volume: allowance rate, office action burden, and time to disposition. That record is where this analysis goes next.

Key findings

• Harrity and Harrity LLP grew the fastest of any firm on the list, from 254 applications in 2015 to 2,027 in 2024, a 698% increase.
• Of the 227 medium-to-large law firms analyzed, 60% posted positive growth over the decade.
• Within a 2020 cohort of these same firms, the group averages an 85.1% allowance rate, slightly above the 83% USPTO benchmark.
• That same cohort disposes of applications in 26.2 months, faster than the 28-month USPTO benchmark.
• Growth came from two engines, organic filing increases and mergers and acquisitions, and several firms on the list used both.
  

Which patent law firms grew the most over the past decade?

The Harrity firm led all comers, but the top 25 fastest-growing patent law firms each at least doubled or came close to doubling their USPTO application volume from 2015 to 2024. Growth here is the percentage change in utility and plant applications filed, among firms filing more than 250 applications a year in both years.

Source: Juristat analysis of USPTO utility and plant applications, 2015 and 2024. Firm names and figures pending final verification.

Two firms can post the same growth and mean very different things by it. One built the work organically, prospect by prospect. Another absorbed a book of business through a merger. Both count here, and the ranking does not try to separate them, but it is worth knowing which is which before reading a firm's position as a sign of demand for its work.

How do the fastest-growing patent firms perform at the USPTO?

Growth and prosecution quality are not the same thing, so it is worth checking the fastest-growing firms against the USPTO benchmark. Measured on the 2020 cohort, as a group they hold up: the top 25 average an 85.1% allowance rate, slightly above the 83% benchmark, and dispose of applications in 26.2 months against the 28-month benchmark. The edge is real but modest. These firms sit a little above average on the outcomes that matter, not far ahead of it.

That modest gap is the point. Fast growth does not automatically mean better prosecution. A firm can win a great deal of new work and still sit at or below the benchmark on the outcomes that matter to a client, which is why filing volume alone is a weak way to judge a firm.

85.1%

Average allowance rate across the 25 fastest-growing firms, against the 83% USPTO benchmark (2020 cohort, Juristat).

What drives growth at a patent law firm?

Patent firms grow two ways, by winning more organic filing work and by acquiring books of business through mergers, and the fastest-growing firms often combine both. A decade that included the America Invents Act, the Alice decision, and a pandemic rewarded firms that could absorb shocks and keep filing.

Mergers change a firm's filing count faster than any amount of business development. When two firms combine, their books combine with them, and a mid-pack firm can jump the ranking in a single year. That is real growth, but it is a different kind than a firm that expanded one client at a time, and it says something different about the practice underneath.

Does filing more patents mean prosecuting them better?

No. Filing volume measures how much work a firm wins, not how well it prosecutes, and the two can move independently.

Allowance rate has the same limit. Read on its own, it can move for reasons that have nothing to do with quality: any firm that amends claims narrowly will post a higher rate on a narrower patent. That is a caution about the metric in general, not a claim about any firm on this list. It is why a rate means little without the prosecution context behind it: which rejections were raised, how the firm responded, and whether the response held.

This is where prosecution data earns its place. Anyone can count filings. Juristat's record shows what happened inside those filings, which rejections a firm faced, how it responded, and whether the response worked, across more than 20 years of USPTO prosecution history covering over 10 million  applications and more than 20,000 examiners.

What does patent firm growth signal for corporate IP teams?

For a company choosing outside counsel, a firm's filing growth is a starting signal, not a verdict. The firms scaling fastest are worth a look, but the decision should rest on prosecution performance in the company's own technology areas, which is what outside-counsel benchmarking measures.

A firm that files heavily in software may tell you nothing useful about how it would prosecute a biotech portfolio. Growth is portfolio-wide; the question a corporate IP team actually has is narrower and more useful: how does this firm perform on my art units, against my examiners, on the rejections my applications draw. That is where a ranking like this one stops and firm-specific benchmarking begins.

See how any firm actually prosecutes, not just how much it files.

The record underneath the growth

A decade of growth is a real achievement, but it is the prosecution record underneath the volume, not the volume itself, that tells you which firms are built to keep growing.

Juristat turns more than 20 years of USPTO prosecution history into the record behind every filing count.

Firms use it to win and defend work on evidence. Corporate IP teams use it to see how their outside counsel actually performs. Both start from the same place: a dataset built on the complete USPTO prosecution record.

Frequently asked questions about patent law firm growth

How were the fastest-growing patent law firms ranked?

Firms were ranked by the percentage change in USPTO utility and plant application volume from 2015 to 2024. The analysis was limited to medium-to-large law firms filing more than 250 applications a year in both years, and it excluded design patents, reissues, reexaminations, provisionals, and corporate in-house filers. Firms that file primarily on behalf of foreign applicants were included, since the ranking reflects USPTO filing volume.

What counts as a medium-to-large patent firm?

For this analysis, a firm filing more than 250 USPTO applications a year. That threshold keeps the ranking focused on firms with enough volume for year-over-year change to be meaningful rather than an artifact of a handful of filings.

Do faster-growing patent firms have higher allowance rates?

Slightly, on average. Measured on a 2020 cohort, the 25 fastest-growing firms average an 85.1% allowance rate, a little above the 83% USPTO benchmark. Growth measures how much work a firm wins, while allowance rate measures prosecution outcomes, and a firm can grow quickly without leading on outcomes.

How can I benchmark a patent firm's prosecution performance?

Compare the firm's allowance rate, office action burden, and time to disposition against the USPTO benchmark and against peer firms in the same technology areas. Juristat's outside-counsel benchmarking is built for exactly that comparison.

Where does Juristat's patent prosecution data come from?

Juristat is built on more than 20 years of USPTO prosecution history covering over 10 million applications and more than 20,000 examiners. The data comes straight from the patent office record, not from the open web.