Happy 10M! The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued the 10 millionth utility patent using its current numbering system, which dates back to 1836. No. 10,000,000 went to Joseph Marron and Raytheon, for "Coherent LADAR Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection," which is, of course, a method of bouncing lasers off of targets to figure out their range and velocity. It took 155 years to issue the first 5 million patents. It took just 27 years to issue the next 5 million. The Verge