How Smart Is Your State? US States Ranked by Patents per Million People

If you don't really agree with software patents this measure doesn't work well...

I think "cashiers who can make change without a cash register" would be a better measure.

For those that want to experiment with the KML file you can download it at <a href="http://www.sharcmedia.com/kml/PatentsPerMillion2.kml" rel="nofollow">http://www.sharcmedia.com/kml/PatentsPerMillion2.kml</a><p>Regarding a finer grained heat map it would be cool, but I couldn't find any finer grained data (eg. by US Postcode) on the USPTO site.

It'd be much better if they de-aggregated this information over the surface to create a true 'heat map'. If they did this, you'd probably see true hotspots of patent innovation which I'll bet correspond nicely to startup hubs.

This would be a lot better if the colors varied continuously.

nice, a patent troll ranking for the US