IBM Ranks as No.1 Patent Receiver in 2003

by Anton Shilov
02/02/2004 | 03:45 PM

The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently disclosed the 2003 Top 10 private sector patent recipients. There are not a lot of changes in those rankings, as the biggest and greatest inventors of our times work in the wealthiest technology companies of the planet.

The table below represents the number of patents applied by companies in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Top 10 Private Sector Patent Recipients for the 2002 and 2001 Calendar Years
		Number of Patents
Preliminary Rank 2003	Company Name	2003	2002	2001
1	International Business Machines	3415	3288	3411
2	Canon Cabushiki Kaisha	1992	1893	1877
3	Hitachi	1893	1602	1271
4	Matsushita Electrical Industry	1786	1544	1440
5	HP	1759	1385	978
6	Micron Technology	1707	1833	1643
7	Intel Corporation	1592	n/a	n/a
8	Philips	1353	n/a	n/a
9	Samsung	1313	n/a	n/a
10	Sony Corporation	1311	1434	1363

NB! Please not that we publish preliminary patent counts for 2003 and 2002. Numbers for 2001 are final.

As you may notice, IBM and Canon are again ranked No.1 and No.2 respectively. We need to note that IBM is totally unrivalled, while Cannon is pretty close to its “competitors” Hitachi, Matsushita and HP, who made a good jump from 2002.

There are three new companies in the Top 10 and there are three who left the table. The three new entries are Intel, Philips and Samsung – all are very influential in the markets they serve. NEC, the bygone No.2, as well as General Electric and Mitsubishi are out of the list.

What is pretty clear about all the trends with patents issued and applied for in the United States of America is that majority of inventions are in the field of computer technology. All other industries do not develop so rapidly to keep up with computer science; moreover, with computer technologies getting to every single market these days, the majority of inventions will be dominated by computer technology firms throughout a very long period of time from now.