How many patents have been issued?

Approximately 8000000

It is widely known the fact that a patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention.  There is a significant increase in the number of patents issues.  The United States Patent and Trademark Office granted 4,553,317 patents between 1970 and 2009.  There were patents issued in 7861000 in 2010 and 7500000 patents issued in 2008.