The Seattle Metropolitan Area

This page is designed to provide useful information for those new to the Seattle metropolitan area (MA), and has a particular focus on the technology and intellectual property law "scene" in Seattle.

The Seattle metropolitan area has a population of over 3.2 million people and is a leading technology center in the U.S. Between December 1, 2007 and December 1, 2008, the following numbers of patents were issued to residents of the various cities in the Seattle MA 1,702 patents to Seattle residents; 633 patents to Kirkland residents; 1,069 patents to Bellevue residents (I filtered out Bellevue, Nebraska); 1268 patents to Redmond residents; 125 patents to Renton residents; no patents for Tukwila residents, although over history Tukwila residents have had 72 patents issued to them, including several in 2007. In the same 12 month time period 49 patents were issued to Tacoma residents; and 200 patents were to Bothell residents. One cannot total these numbers, however, to arrive at the total number of patents issued to metro area inventors, because this would result in a great deal of double counting, as a patent may list many inventors from many different cities.

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) there are 381 Seattle patent attorneys and patent agents. Not everyone listed as a Seattle patent attorney or patent agent, however, is necessarily currently actively engaged in the practice of patent law. To be listed a person must be admitted to practice at the USPTO and have an address in Seattle. Using the same criterion, there are 69 Bellevue patent attorneys; 79 Redmond patent attorneys (58 of whom work for Microsoft); just 7 Kirkland patent attorneys; 5 Renton patent attorneys; 17 Bothell patent attorneys; no Tukwila patent attorneys and 8 Tacoma patent attorneys.

The largest exclusively intellectual property law firm in the Seattle Metro area is Christensen O'Conner Johnson & Kindness PLLC (sometimes referred to as "Cojak") with 39 Seattle Patent Attorneys. Seed IP is second with 33 Seattle Patent Attorneys. Both Cojak and Seed are Seattle patent law institutions. Perkins Coie, on the other hand is a large firm, having offices in 15 cities. But Perkins has a fairly large patent presence in Seattle with 25 Seattle Patent Attorneys.

Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, WA and Amazon.com of Seattle are the biggest and most important metro area technology companies, but many other medium and small technology firms are headquartered in this area. Moreover, Microsoft is not limited to Redmond, but has an expanding office presence in Bellevue, WA and Seattle. Expedia, Inc., the travel booking website corporation has its headquarters in Bellevue, WA. Also, another icon of the Internet world, Google, has a large office suite in Kirkland, WA.

Bellevue also hosts Intellectual Ventures, Inc. a privately held enterprise devoted to purchasing promising patents, and developing and protecting its own inventions. At last count, this company employed 17 patent attorneys, busy buying patents and prosecuting patent applications (ie. getting new patents from the USPTO).