In 2014, IBM was issued 7,534 U.S. patents, dramatically outpacing every other technology vendor. In second place for 2014 U.S patents was Samsung, with 4,952 patents, followed in the number three spot by Canon with 4,055 patents. According to IBM, its 2014 patent haul is greater than the combined total of Accenture, Amazon, Google, HP, Intel and Oracle.
IBM’s 2014 patent numbers were an increase from 2013, when Big Blue was issued 6,800 patents. In total, from 1993 to 2014, IBM has racked up 81,500 U.S patents.Though IBM has been at the top of the U.S patent issuing rankings for 22 years, IBM’s patent history goes back more than 100 years. In 2011, IBM celebrated the 100th anniversary of its first patent, U.S. patent #998,631, which was for a ‘perforating machine,’ essentially a punch card system used for tabulation.
Read the full story at Datamation:
IBM Added to Patent Horde in 2014
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
