IFI CLAIMS Announces 2015 U.S. Patent Rankings

IBM, Samsung and Canon Keep Top Slots While Rest of Top 50 Get Shuffled; U.S. Patent Counts Down for First Time Since 2007

MADISON, Conn., Jan. 13, 2016 — IFI CLAIMS^® Patent Services, a leading producer of global patent databases, analytic solutions and innovative web services, today announced its annual tabulation of the top U.S. patent recipients, a ranking that is trusted throughout the world. Using proprietary algorithms to analyze U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) data, the 2015 IFI CLAIMS U.S. Top 50 accurately ranks global patent assignees by utility patent counts.

After seven straight years of increases, 2015 is the first year since 2007 to show a downturn in U.S. patent activity. IFI CLAIMS says there were 299,365 utility patents granted for the calendar year, which is down just less than 1% compared to 2014. Even perennial patent leader IBM is down slightly compared to 2014–although still keeps its #1 position–while #2 Samsung and #3 Canon maintain their 2014 slots with small gains over the prior year.

Big gainers include Qualcomm moving up 3 places to #4, Google up 3 places to the #5 slot, LG Electronics up 1 to #8 and Intel jumping back into the Top 10 at #9. Toshiba increases counts slightly keeping hold of the #6 position. IFI analysis shows downward momentum for some including Sony (#7 down from #4), Panasonic Corp. (#18 down from #10), and Microsoft (#10 down from #5 besting #11 Apple by only 18 patents). Apple’s counts decreased 3% over 2014 but its ranking went unchanged.

Amazon Makes Impressive Gains

A total of 20 U.S.-based companies appear on the 2015 Top 50, up from 19 in 2014 and 18 in 2013—America’s largest share of that list in more than a decade. Arguably the most notable gainer among American companies in the Top 50 is Amazon Technologies, which moves up 24 places from #50 to #26. For more insight, view IFI’s 2015 Patent Trends posted on the company website.

"After seven straight years of prolific patent growth, 2015 saw the first sign of de-acceleration,” said Mike Baycroft, CEO, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. “I wouldn’t suggest though that the patent train is losing momentum as many companies continue to crank out more patents than the previous year. That historic seven-year run was remarkable especially when you consider that IBM, Samsung and Canon each generate more than twice as many patents now as they did a decade ago.”

Several Top 50 companies dropped considerably lower in the rankings, but not solely because they generated fewer patents. One of the reasons for the seismic shifts this year, according to Larry Cady, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services Senior Analyst, is due to where patents are being parked.

“Rather than keeping all corporate patents under a single registration, some companies are choosing to spread their portfolios across multiple entities,” said Cady. “This is why we are seeing such dramatic movement this year with Microsoft and Panasonic, which all started assigning some patents to newly formed holding companies.”

Other companies have spread out their portfolios before including Samsung, HP and AT&T but, according to Cady, this year it is becoming a trend. IFI CLAIMS carefully manages its standardized assignee name database and tracking process. It maintains the integrity of subsidiaries that are distinct legal entities and treats each separately on the Top 50 ranking.

IFI CLAIMS also just released the 2015 IFI CLAIMS German Top 50, its first annual ranking of the top assignees of German utility patents. It also is giving free access to the IFI CLAIMS Top 1,000 rankings, a multi-year analysis of global patentees to receive the most U.S. utility grants, also is available again this year.

One of the oldest and most trusted patent analysis firms, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services is known throughout the world as the gold standard tabulator of U.S. and global patents. For more than 60 years, clients have turned to IFI to assist with patent analysis and more recently as a means of tracking “total portfolio ownership.” The company tracks patent data worldwide including the U.S., Europe, Japan and China. For more information visit www.ificlaims.com.

About IFI CLAIMS Patent Services/Fairview Research

Headquartered in the U.S. in Madison, Conn. with a satellite office in Munich, Germany, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services is the preeminent producer of value-added patent databases and the innovative CLAIMS DIRECT platform and web service. From the most rigorous U.S. assignee name standardization process in the industry, to continual class code updates, and comprehensive indexing for chemical patents — IFI has built a solid reputation as a leader in patent databases worldwide including North America, Europe, and Asia. IFI CLAIMS is a division of Fairview Research (Madison, Conn., and Barcelona, Spain), a provider of data-enrichment technology and services for information retrieval and analysis. Founded in 2006, the company is skilled at making large-scale scientific and technical databases more searchable and helping to lower the cost of specialized research. For more information, visit www.ificlaims.com.