IBM Tops Patent List, Followed by Samsung and Canon

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:07PM EST · Published Jan 13, 6:41AM EST

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IBM Tops Patent List, Followed by Samsung and Canon — © Thinkstock

According to research firm IFI CLAIMS Patent Service, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) led all recipients of U.S. patents in 2015, at 7,355 out of 298,407 utility patents granted.

The rate at which patent grants have improved in number has ended:

“After seven straight years of prolific patent growth, 2015 saw the first sign of de-acceleration,” said Mike Baycroft, CEO, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. “I wouldn’t suggest though that the patent train is losing momentum as many companies continue to crank out more patents than the previous year. That historic seven-year run was remarkable especially when you consider that IBM, Samsung and Canon each generate more than twice as many patents now as they did a decade ago.”

South Korea’s Samsung was granted 5,072 patents, followed by Japan’s Canon at 4,134. In fourth place, American mobile hardware and software company Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) was granted 2,900, followed by Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google at 2,835.
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Among the reasons some companies posted a drop:

Several Top 50 companies dropped considerably lower in the rankings, but not solely because they generated fewer patents. One of the reasons for the seismic shifts this year, according to Larry Cady, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services Senior Analyst, is due to where patents are being parked.

“Rather than keeping all corporate patents under a single registration, some companies are choosing to spread their portfolios across multiple entities,” said Cady. “This is why we are seeing such dramatic movement this year with Microsoft and Panasonic, which all started assigning some patents to newly formed holding companies.”

While grants have flattened, the philosophy about where they end up has changed the counting process considerably.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.