This article originally appeared on the eBay Inc. blog.

For the past 20 years eBay has played a major role in advancing commerce and technology through unique innovations. 

Those advancements just reached a major milestone, as eBay was recently awarded its 1000th patent¹.  The application leading to this 1000th patent was originally filed on October of 2011 and related to personalization of search results, an area of high importance to our many buyers buyers across the globe.  We are extremely proud to have reached this important innovation milestone.

The journey to this remarkable achievement began in 1998 with eBay’s filing of its first patent application, entitled, “INTEGRATED AUCTION.” In the years since, our amazingly talented technologists and innovators have continually sought to challenge the status quo by developing new and creative solutions focused on reducing friction for our customers.  This creation and innovation can happen at any time and at any corner of the business.

At eBay we are committed to being inventive and look forward to acquiring our next 1000 patents on behalf of eBay platform users everywhere.

Finally, a special congratulations to all the inventors that have helped us reach the 1000 milestone:

¹ after accounting for patent assets allocated to former subsidiary PayPal, Inc., which was spun off on July 17, 2015.