Global: number of Facebook patent filings by legal status 1999-2019

Facebook filed a total of 551 patent families in 2018. This was the third highest number of patents filed by the company. Of the patent families filed in 2018, 166 families are still waiting on full protection as of October 1, 2020. The timeline is based on data provided by PatentSight.
Founded in 2004, Facebook is currently the biggest social networking service based on global reach and total active users.

Number of Facebook patent families* worldwide by filing year from 1999 to 2019, by legal status

Filing Year	In force**	Pending	Inactive
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-

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Release date

October 2020

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

October 1, 2020

Supplementary notes

* A patent family is defined as a group of patent documents all of which have the same set of priorities. I.e., it is a group of patent documents that protect the same invention across authorities.

** The 'In force' category covers patent families that have been granted and are active.

*** As it usually takes 18 months after first filing for a patent to get published, the data for the year 2019 is subject to change.

The owner of a patent includes all patents owned by a company and its subsidiaries (by at least 50%) based on comprehensive research on corporate structures, M&A, Spin-offs, company names changes, patent transactions. PatentSight also tracks former names of companies and subsidiaries, ongoing mergers and acquisitions, acquisitions of the past, reassignments, companies that have the same applicant, and transliterations by patent offices.

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