Samsung surpasses IBM for the first time in terms of the number of patents registered in the United States: 8,517 licenses are to blame.
Once one of the most notorious companies in the consumer electronics industry, the truth is that Today IBM is not one of the companies with the greatest presence in terms of physical devicesand that despite the fact that he had been leading innovation and advancement in the industry for 29 years with more patents than anyone before the US authorities.
This was a privilege and a medal no less than, however, IBM managers lost to Samsung in 2022just as our classmates told us PhoneArenawell It has been the South Korean giant that received the most patents from the USPTO last year and with quite a difference.
Not surprisingly, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Samsung the registration of 8,513 patentsleaving IBM second for the first time in 29 years with only 4,743 patents and a 44% decrease from the 8,682 it received in 2021.
Third in discord is an old acquaintance of the mobile industry such as LGwhich, although it preferred to abandon the smartphone market due to its low profitability, maintains its roadmap in terms of innovation with 4,580 patents registered in the United States in 2022increasing its year-on-year baggage by 5%.
The USPTO says that these patents “awarded for the invention of a new and useful process, machine, fabrication, or composition of matter, or a new and useful improvement on an existing one”so no doubt Samsung’s work in all niche markets seems to be well recognized in terms of the number of entries in the intellectual property registry.
These patents obviously serve to protect new product development and stop others from making, using, or selling our inventions, even though we actually end up serving as a legal basis to sell licenses and obtain economic benefits.
Is this precisely what IBM does best these days, since the firm based in Armonk, New York, generated more than 27,000 million dollars licensing its intellectual property and patents between the years 1996 and 2022.
From IBM, the vice president and director of the research division (IBM Research), the Spanish Darío Gil, say that from 2020 it was decided to significantly modify the strategyand that this has had a lot to do with the surprised from Samsung:
We decided to no longer seek numerical leadership in patents, but to continue to be an intellectual property powerhouse thanks to one of the world’s strongest portfolios of priority technologies.
The idea seems to be better focus their work and the patents that are registered to get the most out of them, especially within the fields and the most modern and future-proof technology such as AI, hybrid cloud computing, cybersecurity or quantum computingamong others.
For his part, Samsung continues with its usual evolutionbeing already since 2017 above 8,000 patents annually registered in different fields.
And now to complete, we have to talk about Toyota Jidosha KK as fourth classified behind LG with 3,065 patents (11% more than in 2021) and Canon KK in fifth position with 3,046 patents and a 10% reduction in terms of registration entries compared to the previous year.
