IBM Grabs 7355 Patents in 2015, Leading All Other Vendors

That’s been true of the past 23 years, with IBM leading the way again in 2015 by claiming 7,355 patents.

On the cloud side, IBM was awarded patents for a way to lay out a topology of available resources in cloud systems to find the shortest route between recourse clusters and the end user to cut down on the latency that can occur in cloud services.

“During IBM’s 23 years atop the patent list, the company’s inventors have received more than 88,000 United States patents”. Panasonic’s patents were divided among Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co. IBM consistently spends about 6 percent of its annual revenue on research and development – less than half that of the average USA technology company with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion. The company’s patent interests now extend far beyond business methods, though, and more recently it has been innovating in cloud computing and robotics.

“More than 2,000 of IBM’s patents past year were related to its cloud and cognitive computing, many of which are in use and part of the Watson offering’s capabilities”, says Dr. Bernie Meyerson, Chief Innovation Officer at IBM.

There are some big changes in the patent landscape hiding behind a small drop in the number of utility patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a year ago.

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 US and global 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. Amazon was the most notable gainer among American companies in the Top 50, moving up 24 places from No. 50 in 2014 to No. 26 in 2014.

“Rather than keeping all corporate patents under a single registration, some companies are choosing to spread their portfolios across multiple entities”, said Cady.

Companies such as Microsoft and Panasonic have assigned some patents to newly formed holding companies, which explains why several entities dropped considerably lower in the rankings, IFI said. The USPTO only granted 465 patents to Microsoft Corp.in 2015 – but granted 1,956 to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC. (NASDAQ: QCOM) was granted 2,900, followed by Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google at 2,835.

This trend will likely continue into 2016 with other companies following Microsoft and Google’s lead, Cady said. These patents cover function over design.