Rating of 50 companies that received the largest number of patents in 2012

A rating of 50 companies with the highest number of patents in the United States last year was published . In total, in 2012, the Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued 253,155 patents.

Which companies were the most inventive?



The largest number of companies in the Top 50 represent the Asian region (26 companies). The second largest region is the United States with 17 companies.

For the twentieth consecutive year, IBM remained the leader in the number of inventions, 6478 patents were registered in the name of the corporation and its researchers, which is 5% more than in 2011. Samsung is the second in the ranking, having received 5081 patents. Canon closes the top three with a result of 3174. Sony is in fourth place with an increase of almost 33% compared with 2011. Panasonic and Microsoft occupy fifth and sixth places, respectively.

For the first time, Google entered the list by registering 1,151 patents (21st place). Google immediately follows Apple, which has 1,136 patents.

A place	Patents	Company	The country
1	6478	International Business Machines Corp	USA
2	5081	Samsung Electronics Co Ltd KR	Korea
3	3174	Canon KK JP	Japan
4	3032	Sony Corp JP	Japan
5	2769	Panasonic Corp JP	Japan
6	2613	Microsoft Corp	USA
7	2447	Toshiba Corp JP	Japan
8	2013	Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd TW	Taiwan
9	1652	General electric co	USA
10	1624	LG Electronics Inc KR	Korea
eleven	1535	Fujitsu Ltd JP	Japan
12	1461	Seiko Epson Corp JP	Japan
thirteen	1436	Hitachi Ltd JP	Japan
14	1410	Ricoh Co Ltd JP	Japan
fifteen	1394	Hewlett-Packard Development Co LP	USA
16	1377	GM Global Technology Operations LLC	USA
17	1292	QUALCOMM Inc	USA
18	1290	Intel Corp	USA
19	1285	Toyota Jidosha KK JP	Japan
20	1157	Broadcom corp	USA
21	1151	Google inc	USA
22	1136	Apple inc	USA
23	1132	Honda Motor Co Ltd JP	Japan
24	1118	Sharp KK JP	Japan
25	1050	Xerox corp	USA
26	1039	Renesas Electronics Corp JP	Japan
27	1033	Fujifilm Corp JP	Japan
28	1012	Brother Kogyo KK JP	Japan
29th	986	Research In Motion Ltd CA	Canada
thirty	977	Siemens AG DE	Germany
31	951	Cisco Technology Inc	USA
32	913	Micron technology inc	USA
33	886	AT&T Intellectual Property ILP	USA
34	861	Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co Ltd JP	Japan
35	843	Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson SE	Sweden
36	830	Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV NL	Netherlands
37	829	Texas Instruments Inc	USA
38	823	NEC Corp JP	Japan
39	815	Honeywell International Inc	USA
40	782	Hong Fu Jin Precision Industry (Shenzhen) Co Ltd CN	China
41	765	Denso Corp JP	Japan
42	748	Bosch, Robert GmbH DE	Germany
43	747	SK Hynix Inc KR	Korea
44	696	Mitsubishi Denki KK JP	Japan
45	686	Fuji Xerox Co Ltd JP	Japan
46	673	Boeing Co The	USA
47	664	Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute KR	Korea
48	650	Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co TW	Taiwan
49	636	Alcatel-Lucent FR	France
fifty	626	LG Display Co Ltd KR	Korea

IBM's 2012 patents include inventions that lead to fundamental breakthroughs in key areas of the company, including analytics, Big Data, cybersecurity, cloud technology, mobile communications, social networks and virtual environments as well as industry solutions for retail, banking, healthcare and transport:

• US patent No. 8275803: System and method for forming answers to questions. This patented invention was applied to the IBM Watson system and describes a technology that allows a computer to take questions in a natural language, fully understand them and give accurate answers.
• US Pat. No. 8250010: An electronic self-learning synapse with a peak-time-dependent synaptic plasticity and using unipolar memory switching elements. This patent describes algorithms and schemes for effectively simulating the learning ability of the human brain synapse and lays the foundation for creating a computer architecture that is not based on von Neumann principles. IBM is working on a cognitive computing project called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE), which aims to emulate the brain's ability to perceive information, perform actions and learn, receiving signals of lower amplitude and strength, without programming.
• US patent No. 8185480: System and method for optimizing the detection of patterns using non-Gaussian parameters. This patent describes technology associated with patterns and their recognition in fast-growing, large data sets with complex information, such as speech recognition or satellite data processing in order to predict the occurrence of traffic jams.
• US patent No. 8200501: Methods, systems and computer programs for combining information about medical procedures in the databases of health facilities. This invention describes a technology that allows physicians to more effectively obtain and analyze medical data and records stored in several heterogeneous data sources, which improves their ability to investigate, diagnose and treat diseases.
• U.S. Patent Nos. 8291378: Simplified Deployment Modeling and No. 8332873: Dynamically Hosting an Application Instance in a Data Center Environment. These patented inventions describe a virtual software environment consisting of a modeling platform for describing application components along with their requirements and characteristics, and an intelligent control system for dynamically deploying, updating, and managing working instances. The inventions enable the IBM PureSystems family of products to use repeating patterns for faster deployment and optimized lifecycle management of working application instances.
• US Patent No. 8341441: Reducing power consumption in cloud computing environments. This patented invention describes a technology that provides a more efficient use of the resources of cloud computing systems, thereby minimizing power consumption.
• US patent No. 8247261: The production of thin-film substrates by chipping the substrate under the influence of voltage. This patent describes an affordable way to produce a new class of flexible semiconductor materials, which will become the basis for ultrathin, light and flexible products with a wide range of possible applications, such as biomedicine, security, wearable computers and LED lighting systems.
• US patent No. 8302173: Providing a set of access codes to a user device. This invention describes a method for checking and receiving one or more security codes - valid for a short period of time to increase security - through a mobile network (for example, SMS) and a separate encrypted channel from a secure server, which can be used, for example, to make secure transactions or secure login from your mobile phone.

Examples of other interesting and important IBM inventions, patented in 2012, can be viewed here .