Date: 14/01/2007

The list of multi national corporations with highest number of US patents in 2006

IFI Claims, a patent services company has released list of top 35 companies who hold the most number of US patents in the year 2006. IBM Corp., with 3651 patents filed in the year 2006, leads the race far ahead with close competitor Samsung with 2453 patents. This elephant sized company in all terms, is the master of technology innovation. If you see the percentage rise in patents, Microsoft leads by earning 1463 patents in 2006, a rise of 96% compared to 746 patents in 2005. Nokia and Broadcom rank 2nd and 3rd in their rise in earned patents.

Semiconductor and IT related companies dominate this list and also growing faster and climbing the ladder. If automotive companies HONDA, Denso and Bosch are removed, the rest are only electronics and related companies.

Region wise, Japanese based companies are highest followed by US and Europe and S Korea.

Here is the table of top 35 companies
Rank Company Patents earned in 2005 Patents earned in 2006 Percentage increase in patents
1 IBM 2941 3651 24.1
2 Samsung 1641 2453 49.5
3 Canon 1828 2378 30.1
4 Matsushita 1688 2273 34.7
5 Hewlett-Packard 1797 2113 17.6
6 Intel 1549 1962 26.7
7 Sony 1149 1810 57.5
8 Hitachi 1271 1749 37.6
9 Toshiba 1258 1717 36.5
10 Micron 1561 1612 3.3
11 Fujitsu 1154 1513 31.1
12 Microsoft 746 1463 96.1
13 Seiko Epson 888 1205 35.7
14 General Electric 906 1051 16.0
15 Fuji photo 755 918 21.6
16 Infineon 804 904 12.4
17 Philips 767 901 17.5
18 Texas Instruments 736 884 20.1
19 Siemens 693 857 23.7
20 Honda 730 836 14.5
21 Sun Micorsystems 654 776 18.7
22 Denso Corp. 645 770 19.4
23 NEC 673 744 10.5
24 LG 463 695 50.1
25 Ricoh 471 695 47.6
26 Sharp 493 692 40.4
27 Eastman Kodak 578 688 19.0
28 Broadcom 414 660 59.4
29 Cisco 439 649 47.8
30 Bosch 758 648 -14.5
31 Mitsubishi 629 623 -1.0
32 Nokia 337 597 77.2
33 Renesas 612 593 -3.1
34 Motorola 461 578 25.4
35 Honeywell 462 559 21.0