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Most Inventive Cities, from San Jose to Raleigh

Centers of Creation

The Daily Beast finds the urban centers that are booming centers for ingenuity.

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Over the past few weeks, the White House has been eager to talk up the America Invents Act, a patent reform bill passed in September that was touted as something of a miracle cure for job creation. The new law promises to make the approval process faster and give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more control over its funding. And with those changes, some 200,000 new jobs may follow.

Which American cities are leading the innovation charge, and where will these jobs likely be created? To find out, The Daily Beast tallied the number of patent applications filed and the number of patents granted in 2010 for the 200 largest cities across the country, according to the USPTO. Each city was ranked based on its patents (applied and approved) per capita, meaning these are the cities that have the highest resident-to-inventor ratio. Population counts are according to the U.S. Census.

articles/2011/10/02/most-inventive-cities-from-san-jose-to-raleigh/inventive-cities-teaser_bqoh8d