The Ten Largest Latin American Filers of U.S. Patent Applications

Latin America's Growing Footprint at the USPTO

Innovators throughout Latin America increasingly look beyond their home markets to protect their inventions, and the United States—as one of the world's largest single economies and the top foreign destination for nearly every Latin American country's applicants—is consistently the first stop. Brazil and Mexico anchor the region's presence before the USPTO by a wide margin, but a number of other countries and companies, from Argentine energy producers to Colombian conglomerates, maintain a real and active U.S. patent presence as well. This post breaks down which Latin American countries send the most patent applications to the USPTO and which Latin American-based companies hold the largest U.S. patent portfolios.

The Ten Largest Latin American Countries Filing at the USPTO

WIPO country IP profiles, 2024 abroad applications × reported U.S. destination share

The USPTO no longer publishes a single, regularly updated public table breaking out utility patent filings by every country of origin, so these figures are estimated from WIPO's 2024 country IP profiles: each country's total "applications filed abroad" figure multiplied by the share of those filings it reports going to the United States as a destination. On that basis, Brazil is far and away the largest Latin American source of USPTO filings, followed by Mexico at less than half Brazil's volume. Argentina and Chile form a clear second tier, and Colombia, Venezuela, and Uruguay round out a group of countries with a smaller but consistent U.S. filing presence. These are directional estimates, not an official USPTO count, but they reflect the same country ordering that appears consistently across WIPO's underlying data.

The Ten Largest Latin American-Based Companies Filing at the USPTO

GreyB patent analytics, total USPTO filings by company

No single public source publishes an audited, year-by-year "top 10 Latin American companies filing at the USPTO" ranking covering exactly 2021–2025. The figures above are each company's total USPTO patent filings drawn from individual company patent-portfolio analyses (GreyB), which is the most current comparable company-level data publicly available, and reflect each company's full U.S. filing history rather than a strict five-year window. Brazilian companies dominate this list—Petrobras and Embraer alone account for more than 600 combined USPTO filings—which lines up with Brazil's position as the region's largest source of U.S.-bound patent applications. Tenaris, while headquartered in Luxembourg today, grew out of Argentina's Techint industrial group and maintains deep Argentine roots and operations, which is why it is commonly counted among the region's leading filers. Notably, no Mexican company appears among the entries with clearly reported USPTO figures in this dataset despite Mexico's strong second-place showing at the country level, which more likely reflects gaps in publicly available company-level patent analytics than an actual absence of Mexican corporate filers—companies like Cemex and FEMSA are widely understood to hold active U.S. patent portfolios even though comparable public figures were not available for this list.

Protecting Cross-Border Innovation Between Latin America and the U.S.

Whether an inventor is based in São Paulo, Mexico City, or Buenos Aires, the U.S. patent system is the most common gateway to the world's largest single market for new technology, industrial processes, and consumer products. Filing successfully at the USPTO from a Latin American base of operations, however, still requires navigating U.S.-specific procedural requirements, examiner practices, and (as of 2026) mandatory U.S. counsel rules for foreign-domiciled applicants.

If your company is based in Latin America and looking to file, manage, or enforce U.S. patents, contact Florida IP Attorney at RThornburg@AllenDyer.com or all 305-374-8303.