The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office apparently made substantial progress in clearing its backlog last year, issuing a record 173,222 corporate patents, up 21% from the 2005 level, said IFI Patent Intelligence, a unit of Wolters Kluwer NV.
IFI said that International Business Machines Corp. was awarded more patents than any other corporation for the 14th year in a row. It got 3,651 patents topping its 2001 record of 3,453.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. jumped to No. 2 in the rankings from No. 5 in 2005 with 2,453 patents, a 49% increase. Japan's Canon Inc. dropped to No. 3. Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Hewlett-Packard Co. rounded out the top five. IFI, which compiles the rankings annually, uses a computerized search system that standardizes corporate names even though patent filings may come from different units of a company.
IFI said that nine of the top 25 patent recipients were Japanese companies, while seven were from the U.S.
U.S. companies in the top 12 also included semiconductor makers Intel Corp. at No. 6 and Micron Technology Inc. at No. 10, and software giant Microsoft Corp. at No. 12. General Electric Co. at No. 14 and Honda Motor Co. at No. 20 were the highest ranked patent recipients that aren't primarily in the electronics field.
Darlene Slaughter, general manager of IFI Patent Intelligence said, "This increase comes on the heels of two years in a row of patent-grant decreases and appears to negate the position that intellectual property activity is on a downswing."
Patent attorneys say that many companies have been stepping up their patent filing activities because they want to have a raft of intellectual property to license to other companies and use in counter suits if they get sued for infringement.
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