Patent Examiner Allowance Rates: What the USPTO Numbers Say

The USPTO allows most of the utility patent applications it fully examines, but the single headline number most people repeat is misleading. Depending on how the math is done, the allowance rate sits somewhere between roughly 60 percent and the low 80s, and it shifts with the technology, the examiner, and the way abandonments tied to continued examination are counted. The agency publishes two versions of the figure for a reason, and reading only one of them gives a distorted picture of how hard it is to get a patent.

How the USPTO defines allowance rate

The allowance rate is the number of applications allowed divided by the number disposed in a fiscal year. The USPTO Patents Dashboard reports it two ways. The rate “including RCEs” counts abandonments that follow a Request for Continued Examination as disposals, which is the traditional method. The rate “without RCEs” excludes those, and it runs higher because an RCE is often a step toward eventual allowance rather than a true dead end. Same applications, two numbers, and the gap between them is not small.

That distinction matters for any inventor trying to set expectations. A rejection is not a verdict. The agency itself counts an application that receives a first action, a final action, and then an allowance as having three actions per disposal, and applications routinely survive several rounds before issuing.

What the long-run data shows

A cohort analysis published by patent law professor Dennis Crouch on the Patently-O blog tracked every published utility application by filing month across the 2001 to 2024 filing years. Applications filed in 2001 issued as patents about 71 percent of the time. The figure fell to a trough near 59 percent for applications filed in May 2006, then climbed steadily: 67 percent for 2010 filings, 74 percent for 2015, and roughly 82 percent for those filed in early 2020. That is a swing of more than 20 percentage points across the period, driven by examination policy rather than by inventors suddenly getting better or worse at inventing.

Volume, by contrast, has flattened. The USPTO issued about 325,800 utility patents in calendar year 2025, almost identical to the 325,600 issued in 2024, according to figures compiled by Crouch. Annual totals have hovered near that mark since 2021, ending the steady year-over-year growth of the prior decade.

Why the average hides the real story

An aggregate allowance rate tells an individual applicant very little, because the rate varies sharply across the USPTO’s technology centers and art units. Software and business-method units have historically allowed a smaller share than mechanical or chemical units. Two applications of equal quality can face very different odds based on where they are routed and which examiner picks them up.

Examiner behavior is measurable enough that a small industry of analytics firms now sells prosecution data on individual examiners. Their tools report something useful for inventors to know: applications in which the applicant requests an interview with the examiner tend to allow at meaningfully higher rates than those handled through written responses alone. The exact lift differs by examiner, but the direction is consistent. Talking to the examiner helps.

What this means for an inventor

The practical reading is that the system rewards preparation and persistence, not luck. A well-drafted application with claims calibrated to what is actually new clears examination more often than a broad, vague one that invites a novelty or obviousness rejection. This is the stage where professional drafting earns its cost, and it is one reason firms such as Enhance Innovations, the Champlin, Minnesota product development company founded in 2010, treat a patent search as the first paid step before any design spending begins. Knowing the prior art before filing shapes claims that examiners are more likely to allow.

Inventors who want to read the primary data can pull it directly. The USPTO publishes allowance and disposal figures on its public dashboard, and its Patent Basics pages explain how examination works. For applicants who want to understand the standards an examiner applies, the agency’s Manual of Patent Examining Procedure lays out the rules in full.

The number to remember

If you want one figure, use the cohort data: roughly four out of five applications filed in recent fully resolved years eventually issued as patents, while the official fiscal-year rate that includes RCE abandonments runs lower. Both are correct. They measure different things. An inventor who understands that distinction will not panic at a first rejection, and will not assume a patent is a formality either. The allowance rate is high enough to be encouraging and variable enough to reward doing the work up front.