Patent Championships 2009

Last year IBM won the most number of patents. That is a championship the big Blue has won for the 17th time in a row! IBM has this image of being a very conservative company. That has changed a lot in the recent past. It has gone through couple of transformations. While it was previously synonymous with big iron, it earns a large part of its revenues through software services now! So, looks can be really misleading. Somehow the innovations must run pretty well if they have to manage this for 17 years consecutively! I am sure IBM is still not as casual as a Google or one of the start ups. Yet, this is running the innovation machine so well. There are a couple of really interesting things about the roll of honors. The second in line, Samsung managed to get significantly less number of patents. IBM received 4914 patents while Samsung received 3611 patents.

The other interesting aspect of the list is that out of the top 10 spots, IBM, Microsoft, Intel and HP are the only American companies. The others are from outside the US: the likes of Samsung, Canon, Panasonic Toshiba, Sony and Seiko Epson. A couple of trends become obvious. Things are going global without a doubt! And companies think that patents are an important tool in the global playing field.