A very interesting question that comes up every now and then is how
many claims should one use for patent applications.  The constraints
seem to be that the Patent Office allows you to have up to twenty patent
claims as part of the initial application fee, with an extra fee for each
additional claim over twenty.  Also, the greater the number of patent claims,
the longer it is going to take the patent examiner to approve the entire
application.  Finally, you have to use whatever it takes to make your claims.
 
    To shed some light on actual practices, I did a survey of about
five weeks worth of new patent abstracts in the Electronics Section,
and counted the claims.  My results show that the number of patent
claims is fairly well distributed over the range of 2 to 16, a slight
decrease up to 20, and a rapid decrease in count after 30.  Eight
and seven claims seems to be the most popular.
 
    Hope this is meaningful information.
 
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization
 
Number of claims, in 1967 Electronics patents
 
        1 -  34        11 -  88        21 -  47        31 -   9
        2 -  84        12 -  83        22 -  38        32 -  14
        3 - 106        13 -  84        23 -  34        33 -  11
        4 - 114        14 - 105        24 -  23        34 -  11
        5 - 104        15 -  96        25 -  32        35 -   8
        6 - 112        16 -  71        26 -  17        36 -   5
        7 - 129        17 -  62        27 -  10        37 -   7
        8 - 130        18 -  60        28 -  22        38 -   7
        9 -  90        19 -  46        29 -  16        39 -   1
       10 - 106        20 -  65        30 -  11        40 -   5
 
                             41:130 -  70