Patents, the life blood of technology

Bragging rights, who has them? That depends on how you slice the numbers.

The usual list ranks recipients by the total number of patents received in a given year. That list for 2004 is as follows:

1. IBM – 3248 patents

2. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. – 1934 patents

3. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha – 1805 patents

4. Hewlett-Packard - 1775 patents

5. Micron Technology – 1760 patents

6. Samsung Electronics Co. – 1604 patents

7. Intel Corporation – 1601 patents

8. Hitachi, Ltd. – 1514 patents

9. Toshiba Corporation – 1310 patents

10. Sony Corporation – 1305 patents

Taking that same list and dividing the number of patents into the number of employees of the recipient creates an “employee patent efficiency ranking” as follows:

6. IBM - 101 employees per patent

9. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. - 150 employees per patent

4. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha - 60 employees per patent

5. Hewlett-Packard - 79 employees per patent

1. Micron Technology - 10 employees per patent

2. Samsung Electronics Co. - 40 employees per patent

3. Intel Corporation - 57 employees per patent

10 Hitachi, Ltd. - 229 employees per patent

8. Toshiba Corporation - 126 employees per patent

7. Sony Corporation - 116 employees per patent

Rambus with 65 patents issued in 2004 & 254 employees, whipped up a patent for every 4 employees.

Notes:

1. Patents are seldom (ever?) issued in the year in which the application is filed.

2. Employees per patent ratios are rounded to the nearest employee.

3. Total number of employees are the “total consolidated employees” as listed on the website of each recipient.

4. Original source for patent numbers is a USPO press release.

Art credit ingleby.com. Check out the site.