---
layout: post
title: 23K Patent Applications With API References Since 2005
image: >-
  http://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/api-evangelist-site/blog/number-of-api-patents-years.png
atomdate: 2016-09-03T00:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Applications
  - Reference
  - References
---
I am working to organize the [23,414 API related patents from between 2005 and present day](http://patents.apievangelist.com/patents/?filter=2016), submitted by 4,283 companies--present in my API patent research. Not all of these APIs are "web APIs", but I think each companies portfolio tells a lot of what they are doing with APIs, their motivations behind, and is also a reflection on the overall state of the industry.

To help me better understand the growth in API related patents I'm slicing and dicing the data, and publishing in different ways--I recently dumped the [number of patents by year and published as a D3.js bar chart](http://patents.apievangelist.com/charts/bar/).

[![](http://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/api-evangelist-site/blog/number-of-api-patents-years.png)](http://patents.apievangelist.com/charts/bar/)

It is pretty depressing to see the growth in patent applications that mention "application programming interface". I'm not sure what this means, but I know it can't be good for making the web work. I'll keep slicing and dicing things, and see if I can keep deriving any meaning from it all. I'm thinking I will publish each companies patent portfolio by itself, as I work to profile each company to see what they are up to with APIs.