The largest companies in the world are heavily weighted by the tech industry. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon were all built on innovations that changed how hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people, work and spend their everyday lives. The role of innovation has not really changed over the last century and a half. Henry Ford invented the assembly line, and with it mass industrial production. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1875. It is the grandfather of the billions of smartphones people use today.
One of the primary measures of innovation is the number of patents someone is granted. For example, Thomas Edison, widely considered to be one of America’s most prolific inventors, held nearly 1,100 patents – a world record for much of the 20th century, though it has since been broken numerous times by others.
The volume of patents is also one of the primary metrics used to compare innovation between companies and countries.
Apple Inc., currently holds more than 70,000 patents globally, for instance, including nearly 2,600 that were filed last year. But the Cupertino, California-based creator of the iPhone didn’t make it onto the top 10 companies with the most patents filed in 2021. Several other major companies, including Toyota, Samsung, Huawei, and IBM all filed more patents than Apple last year. Interestingly, IBM is considered a major failure as it has worked to become one of the world;’s most important tech companies, which it was at one time.
Not all patents are the same and many of them are for innovations that are never used. Some patents are for design – the ornamental appearance of a product, like its shape, configuration, or ornamentation. Others are for utility, meaning the way a product is used and works. Many products are covered by both types of patents if the invention’s unique quality resides in both its utility and appearance. Generally speaking, though, a utility patent is considered more valuable because the utility aspect of a product is the hardest part to invent.
To determine the company with the most patents in 2021, as well as the percentage of patents over or under the number granted in 2020, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 2022 Patent 300 report published by the patent insights resource Harrity Patent Analytics. Information on the function of the latest patent for each company came from the legal information retrieval site Justia.
The most innovative company of 2021 is troubled tech company International Business Machines Corporation. Here are the details:
> 2021 utility patents: 8,540
> Change from 2020: -9%
> Most recent patent: Mixed-reality teleconferencing across multiple locations
Click here to read The Most Innovative Companies in 2021
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