Intellectual Ventures, LG, Nokia and Samsung among 2015's most active patent dealmakers

Yesterday, we published data provided by ktMINE outlining the leading assignors and assignees of US patent assets last year, in terms of the number of assets assigned.

Today, as a follow-up, we present the 2015 data covering the most prolific assignors and assignees in terms of the number of assignments they have transacted. The key point here is that a single assignment can include anywhere from one patent to thousands of assets. As such, figures relating to whole assignments, rather than to the number of patents that have been assigned, can potentially give us more insight into which companies are most active in terms of doing deals. (For example, in yesterday’s blog, Freescale Semiconductor was revealed as the top assignee by number of patents assigned, although most if not all of these 26,002 were transferred in a single transaction after Citibank released its security interest in them in preparation for the chipmaker’s merger with the Netherlands’ NXP Semiconductors.)    

That said, as you can see in the tables below, the company names that appear among the top assignees by assignments correspond closely with top US patent applicant and grantee lists. This probably reflects their high number of original assignments which each consist of a single patent asset.

Beyond these, ktMINE analyst Megan Rourke has pointed out a few interesting trends. Nokia Corporation tops the assignor list with 409 discrete assignments during last year. According to Rourke, this is likely to reflect the company’s movement of a large portion of its US patent portfolio to its new Finland-based, R&D and IP monetisation-focused subsidiary Nokia Technologies Oy. In fourth place on the same table, South Korea’s Samsung Electro-Mechanics assigned a large number of patents to recently spun-off company SoluM. Fifth-ranked Searete LLC – well-documented as an Intellectual Ventures affiliate – made most of its assignments to the patent firm’s Innovation Science Fund. The 12^th most prolific assignor of US patent assets in 2015 appears to have been an individual named Hanbyul Seo, who Rourke identifies as an inventor for South Korea’s LG Group.

Top 50 assignees of US patents by number of assignments transacted 2015

Top 50 assignors of US patents by number of assignments transacted 2015