Top ten list of companies to get US patents in 2011

Top ten list of companies to get US patents in 2011

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office “Performance and Accountability Report of Fiscal Year 2011” the USPTO granted an all-time high 244,430 United States utility patents in 2011.

Asian companies hold eight of the top 10 spots on the 2011 patent list and 25 or half of the top 50 U.S. patent-grant recipients with U.S. firms having17 spots. Asian countries represented in the top 50 include Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Most of the companies in the Top 50 were up from 2010, many shattering records and posting double-digit percentage gains.

IBM has held down the #1 patent rankings position for 19 consecutive years, with a record 6,180 patents in 2011, up from 5,896 in 2010. IBM was the first company to break 5,000-patent in a single year in 2010 and in 2011 the first to break the 6,000-patent mark in a single year.

IBM’s 2011 patent total was almost five times as many as Hewlett-Packard’s 1308 and exceeded the combined issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, EMC, Apple and Google.

More than 8,000 inventors residing in 46 different U.S. states and 36 countries generated the IBM's record-breaking 2011 patent tally. IBM inventors residing outside the United States were responsible for 26% of the company's 2011 patents.

Although in terms of patent grants, IBM has been No. 1 for the lat 19 years, Samsung's published applications eclipsed those of IBM in the last two years... so is the "writing on the wall" that the 19 year streak will end in the next couple years?

List of the top 10 company's to receive a US patent in 2011:

1. International Business Machines (US) 6180
2. Samsung (Korea) 4894
3. Canon K K (Japan) 2821
4. Panasonic Corp (Japan) 2559
5. Toshiba (Japan) 2483
6. Microsoft Corp Corporation (US) 2311
7. Sony Corporation (Japan) 2286
8. Seiko Epson Corp (Japan) 1533
9. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd (Taiwan) 1514
10. Hitachi (Japan) 1465

Where are the most inventors with patents coming from in the U.S.? The inventors come from every state and all of the territories. In 2011, the top five states that led the list in numbers of patents were:

1. California 30,397
2. Texas 8,054
3. New York 8,026
4. Washington 5,227
5. Massachusetts 5,003

According to the "Performance and Accountability Report of 2011" of the 244,430 patents that were issued a little bit less than half (120,178) were issued to United States citizens. The remaining 124,252 issued patents went to citizens of a foreign country.