On January 7, according to the latest U.S. "Patent 300" ranking released by the patent statistics agency Harrity LLP, after ranking first in U.S. patent applications for 29 consecutive years, IBM fell to No. Second, it was surpassed by Samsung Electronics. Chinese vendors Huawei and BOE ranked seventh and eighth, respectively.
In the ranking of US patent applications in 2022, IBM ranked second with 8,520 patents obtained in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 44% to 4,743, while Samsung Electronics won the championship with 8,513 patents. The third to fifth places on the list are LG with 4,580 patent applications, a year-on-year increase of 5%; Toyota with 3,056 patent applications, a year-on-year increase of 11%; Canon with 3,046 patent applications, a year-on-year decrease of 10%.
The sixth is TSMC, with 3,035 patent applications, an increase of 8% year-on-year; the seventh is Huawei, with a year-on-year increase of 3%; BOE ranks eighth with 2,725 patent applications, a substantial increase of 27% year-on-year %%; Raytheon and Qualcomm ranked ninth and tenth with 2684 and 2656 patent applications respectively.
Compared with the ranking of the top 25 companies in 2021, Huawei's ranking in 2022 has dropped by 2 places (it was fifth before that), TSMC's ranking has risen by 1 place, and BOE has risen sharply by 6 places from 14th last year.
The 11th-25th manufacturers are Sony (2638), Intel (2501), Dell (2445), Apple (2313), Google (2077), Amazon (2051), Micron (1921) , Microsoft (1,888), Hyundai (1,786), Hitachi (1,557), Panasonic (1,521), Ericsson (1,419), Johnson & Johnson (1,377), Fujifilm (1,360), Honda (1,351) .
Why did IBM decline significantly?
Overall, although the number of IBM patents in all fields has declined, the number of patents in semiconductors and hardware storage has fallen most significantly. According to Dario Gil, head of IBM Research Institute, in an interview with the media, this mainly reflects the strategic shift that the company has promoted since 2020: focusing on core business patents, enabling engineers to get rid of time-consuming patent processes. He further emphasized that IBM has decided not to pursue the number of patent leadership, but to continue to maintain a strong patent position and continue to have the world's most powerful product portfolio in terms of IBM's leading technology.
In fact, IBM has long prided itself on being a leader in patents. IBM said that in the past 29 years, it has always been the company with the most intellectual property patents, which also makes intellectual property patents one of IBM's important sources of profit. According to data, since 1996, IBM has generated more than $27 billion in intellectual property patent revenue. However, that revenue growth has slowed in recent years as some companies have resisted licensing fees for intellectual property.
However, IBM emphasized that it has not stopped commercializing its intellectual property patents so far. That is to say, in the future, in the fields of technology priority, including hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence, semiconductor, network security, quantum computing, etc., IBM will continue to apply for patents and actively carry out intellectual property patent protection measures.
The shift reflects IBM's broader transition from hardware and stock infrastructure to cloud services and software.
Under the leadership of IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, the company has made more than 25 acquisitions since April 2020, including AI software giant Red Hat Inc. IBM spun off most of its infrastructure services business into a company called Kyndryl Holdings Inc. in November 2021.
Spin-offs were not the reason for last year's decline in patents, Gil said.
Explosive growth in the number of patent applications by Chinese companies
It is worth noting that Samsung Electronics has always been a resident army on the Harrity patent list. Since 2017, it has more than 8,000 patents every year, and has many patents in visual display systems and voice communication systems.
In addition, in the 2022 U.S. Patent 300 ranking published by Harrity LLP, the number of patent applications of other Chinese companies on the list in the U.S. is also growing rapidly. For example, the number of patents of Chinese technology companies such as ByteDance and Baidu has grown the fastest. At the same time, the number of patents obtained by Tencent, Alibaba, and Xiaomi also increased significantly last year.
Among them, ByteDance applied for a patent for a method of adding human body effects to videos, which is often used in Douyin filters.
Specifically, Tencent ranked 53rd, obtaining 789 US patents, an increase of 24% year-on-year; Lenovo ranked 70th, applying for 632 patents, an increase of 10% year-on-year; Baidu ranked 73rd, applying for 618 patents, A year-on-year increase of 43%; Xiaomi ranked 87th, applying for 503 patents, a year-on-year increase of 33%; Alibaba ranked 103rd, applying for 418 patents, a year-on-year increase of 37%; ByteDance ranked 269th, applying for 160 patents, a year-on-year increase of 84%.
“Patent filings by Chinese companies have exploded for years,” said Rocky Berndsen, principal analyst at Harrity, “so as more and more Chinese companies do business in the U.S., We expect a corresponding increase in the number of patents.”
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