Patents plunged in 2009

January 28th, 2010 at 12:04pm Alex Gary

In the latest installment of bad economic news from 2009, the number of patents won by local engineers, researchers and inventors fell to its lowest level since 2005.

Here are the patents awarded to people in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties:

2000 — 144

2001 — 162

2002 — 136

2003 — 142

2004 — 116

2005 — 107

2006 — 144

2007 — 157

2008 — 130

2009 — 109

It typically takes at least 18 months from submission to win a patent, so it’s not surprising patents fell this year since research and development usually is scaled back when revenues plunge.

Still, the concerning thing about the numbers is the area may never reach the levels of patents won in 2001 simply because we’ve lost several companies that did R&D locally. By far, Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. is our biggest research operation. Engineers from the company won 147 patents from 2000 through 2009. That was nearly three times as many as the next biggest patent producer, Southern Imperial Inc. of Rockford.

There are several other companies locally creating new products, procedures or processes, including Schneider Electric, Cadbury Adams and Woodword Governor in Loves Park, Taylor Co. in Rockton and Greenlee Textron, Estwing Manufacturing Co. and Thermo Fisher Scientific in Rockford.

But the Rock River Valley economy has lost several companies that did critical research, including Amerock Corp., which had a division creating new cabinet hardware. Atwood Mobile Products employees won 17 patents this past decade for automotive advances before leaving Rockford. Pacific Scientific, known as PacSci Motion Control when it closed up locally in 2009, made several advances in research for motors and drives.

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