In 1911, IBM was granted its first patent and it took 50 years for it receive its 5,000th. But things have certainly picked up. According to an analysis by ifi Claims Services, IBM was granted more than 5,000 in 2010, ranking the company as No. 1 in patents. This was the first time that any company has received more than 5,000 patents in a year. The following is a list of the top 30 companies on the list:
Rank Company Number of patents
1 | International Business Machines Corp | 5,896 |
2 | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (Korea) | 4,551 |
3 | Microsoft Corp | 3,094 |
4 | Canon K K (Japan) | 2,552 |
5 | Panasonic Corp (Japan) | 2,482 |
6 | Toshiba Corp (Japan) | 2,246 |
7 | Sony Corp (Japan) | 2,150 |
8 | Intel Corp | 1,653 |
9 | LG Electronics Inc (Korea) | 1,490 |
10 | Hewlett-Packard Development Co L P | 1,480 |
11 | Hitachi Ltd (Japan) | 1,460 |
12 | Seiko Epson Corp (Japan) | 1,443 |
13 | Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (Taiwan) | 1,438 |
14 | Fujitsu Ltd (Japan) | 1,296 |
15 | General Electric Co | 1,225 |
16 | Ricoh Co Ltd (Japan) | 1,200 |
17 | Cisco Technology Inc | 1,115 |
18 | Honda Motor Co Ltd (Japan) | 1,050 |
19 | Fujifilm Corp (Japan) | 1,041 |
20 | Hynix Semiconductor Inc (Japan) | 973 |
21 | Broadcom Corp | 958 |
22 | GM Global Technology Operations Inc | 942 |
23 | Micron Technology Inc | 917 |
24 | Siemens AG (Germany) | 873 |
25 | Xerox Corp | 858 |
26 | Denso Corp (Japan) | 853 |
27 | Texas Instruments Inc | 829 |
28 | Honeywell International Inc | 824 |
29 | Sharp K K (Japan) | 818 |
30 | Toyota Jidosha K K (Japan) | 802 |