Celebrity culture is all about popularizing people who have certain attributes that are society deemed exceptional. Celebrities include actors, singers, dancers, designers, politicians, models, athletes, journalists or even reality-show participants.

Celebrities affect almost all aspects of our lives. Yet, most people will find it absurd if celebrities’ names feature in science or technology research. The attributes that make one a celebrity seem to be at odds with attributes that are related to science or technology research.

The expert patent search team at PatentYogi conducted a search in the US patent database to discover the patents that mention celebrities’ names.

For the patents granted in the 21st century, the nerd guru Linus Torvalds takes the top spot with mentions in 2589 patents. The second spot is taken by George Bush with mentions in 284 patents, which is about 10% of the mentions scored by Linus. Larry page does not make it to the top 10, while Sergey Brin is at 7th position.  Inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners Lee is on 8th position.

If we just focus on Hollywood celebrities, Tom Cruise takes the top spot with mentions in 253 patents. The top 10 list does not throw any surprises, as it includes the most popular Hollywood Celebrities.

The all time top 20 patent celebrity list features Albert Einstein at the top spot. Interesting second spot is taken by Madonna. It was most surprising to see Plato on this list at 6th spot. A historical character “Cleopatra” also makes it to this list. Further, Bill Gates (at 13th spot) beats Steve Jobs (at 15th spot).

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