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According to IFI analysis, the USPTO issued an all-time high of 219,614 utility patents in 2010, up 31 percent from 2009 and the most significant annual increase on record. The official Top-20 company ranking appears below. IBM continues to hold down the #1 position, which it has done for 18 consecutive years, with a record 5,896 patents, up 20 percent from 4,914 in 2009. Samsung trails second with 4,551, up 26 percent; while Microsoft is third with 3,094, up 6.5 percent.
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Rank
|
Company
|
2010 patents
|
|
1
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International Business Machines Corp
|
5896
|
|
2
|
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (Korea)
|
4551
|
|
3
|
Microsoft Corp
|
3094
|
|
4
|
Canon K K (Japan)
|
2552
|
|
5
|
Panasonic Corp (Japan)
|
2482
|
|
6
|
Toshiba Corp (Japan)
|
2246
|
|
7
|
Sony Corp (Japan)
|
2150
|
|
8
|
Intel Corp
|
1653
|
|
9
|
LG Electronics Inc (Korea)
|
1490
|
|
10
|
Hewlett-Packard Development Co L P
|
1480
|
|
11
|
Hitachi Ltd (Japan)
|
1460
|
|
12
|
Seiko Epson Corp (Japan)
|
1443
|
|
13
|
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (Taiwan)
|
1438
|
|
14
|
Fujitsu Ltd (Japan)
|
1296
|
|
15
|
General Electric Co
|
1225
|
|
16
|
Ricoh Co Ltd (Japan)
|
1200
|
|
17
|
Cisco Technology Inc
|
1115
|
|
18
|
Honda Motor Co Ltd (Japan)
|
1050
|
|
19
|
Fujifilm Corp (Japan)
|
1041
|
|
20
|
Hynix Semiconductor Inc (Japan)
|
973
|
IBM received patents for a range of inventions in 2010, such as a method for gathering, analyzing, and processing patient information from multiple data sources to provide more effective diagnoses of medical conditions; a system for predicting traffic conditions based on information exchanged over short-range wireless communications; a technique that analyzes data from sensors in computer hard drives to enable faster emergency response in the event of earthquakes and other disasters; and a technology advancement for enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light instead of electrical signals, which can deliver increased performance of computing systems.
More than 7,000 IBM inventors residing in 46 different U.S. states and 29 countries generated the company's record-breaking 2010 patent tally. Inventors residing outside the U.S. contributed to more than 22% of the company's patents in 2010, representing a 27% increase over international inventor contributions during the last three years.
IBM’s 2010 patent total nearly quadrupled Hewlett-Packard’s and exceeded the combined issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, EMC, and Google.
IBM inventors received a record 5,896 U.S. patents in 2010, marking the 18th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world’s most inventive companies. IBM became the first company to be granted as many as 5,000 U.S. patents in a single year. It took IBM's inventorsmore than 50 years to receive their first 5,000 patents after the company was established in 1911.
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