IP-related statistics from the recent past
A selection of key IP facts and figures, as reported by IAM and other sources
The IBM patent factory in four charts
According to ktMINE, IBM’s patent filing tends to go in cycles: an upward trend was apparent from 2004 to 2007, but this dropped off significantly at the onset of the financial crisis. Applications peaked again in 2012, but decreased for another two years before regaining traction in 2014.
IBM is one of the top sellers in the patent market and it often does deals with start-up tech companies approaching an initial public offering. Here are some of the blue-chip tech firms with significant holdings of IBM patents.
Figure 1. Filing

Source: PatSnap
Figure 2. Selling

Share of companies total Patent Asset Index originally owned by IBM
Selected companies, showing share of total Patent Asset Index originally owned by IBM. Source: PatentSight Business Intelligence Platform www.patentsight.com
Figure 3. Abandonment

IBM patent status (Filing/371 date on or after 1/1/2001)
Source: BigPatentData
Generally, Big Blue abandons between 25% and 50% of its total patents for each of the given US patent classification classes; however, 701 (data processing: vehicles, navigation and relative location), 704 (data processing: speech signal processing, linguistics, language translation and audio compression/decompression) and 257 (active solid-state devices; ie, transistors, solid-state diodes), have relatively low abandonment rates.
Table 1. Stock performance of selected publicly traded IP-centric companies, March to May 2019

Source: Google Finance
Tables 2A and 2B show the entities with the highest volume of inbound patent assignment transactions (assignee table) and outbound patent assignment transactions (assignor table), as recorded at the USPTO. These results are calculated by aggregating the number of transactions completed by an assignee/assignor in March and April 2019.
One transaction may include multiple patents, patent families and patent portfolios. Many companies create numerous holding vehicles to house their different IP portfolios; this is why similar company names may appear multiple times in the tables.
Table 2A. Top 30 patent assignees by number of transactions
| Assignee entity | Number of assignments transacted |
1 | United States Department Of Energy | 166 |
2 | Qualcomm Inc | 163 |
3 | Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co Ltd | 116 |
4 | Intel Corp | 110 |
5 | Huawei Technologies Co Ltd | 98 |
6 | National Institutes Of Health - Director DEITR | 80 |
7 | Canon Kabushiki Kaisha | 76 |
8 | Signify Holding BV | 70 |
9 | LG Electronics Inc | 70 |
10 | The Regents Of The University Of California | 66 |
11 | Robert Bosch GmbH | 54 |
12 | Lutron Electronics Co Inc | 54 |
13 | Alibaba Group Holding Ltd | 52 |
14 | International Business Machines Corp | 50 |
15 | Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha | 49 |
16 | BASF SE | 48 |
17 | National Institutes Of Health US Government | 47 |
18 | NIH-DEITR | 46 |
19 | The Toronto-Dominion Bank | 44 |
20 | Siemens Healthcare GmbH | 44 |
21 | National Science Foundation | 42 |
22 | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 40 |
23 | President And Fellows Of Harvard College | 40 |
24 | Koninklijke Philips NV | 38 |
25 | Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP | 38 |
26 | Comcast Cable Communications LLC | 38 |
27 | JPMorgan Chase Bank NA | 31 |
28 | Applied Materials Inc | 30 |
29 | Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare Co Ltd | 29 |
30 | Massachusetts Institute Of Technology | 28 |
Source: ktMINE (www.ktmine.com)
Table 2B. Top 30 patent assignors by number of transactions
| Assignor entity | Number of assignments transacted |
1 | The Johns Hopkins University | 36 |
2 | Wells Fargo Bank National Association | 30 |
3 | Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc | 27 |
4 | Luo Tao | 26 |
5 | Bank Of America NA | 25 |
6 | Gaal Peter | 18 |
7 | Firouzabadian Laleh | 18 |
8 | Ribbich Joseph R | 17 |
9 | Park Kyungmin | 14 |
10 | Chen Wanshi | 14 |
11 | Akkarakaran Sony | 14 |
12 | University Of Utah | 13 |
13 | Hembrough Todd | 13 |
14 | Dinan Esmael | 13 |
15 | Credit Suisse AG Cayman Islands Branch | 13 |
16 | Zhou Hua | 12 |
17 | Venugopal Prashanth | 12 |
18 | PNC Bank National Association | 12 |
19 | Jeon Hyoungsuk | 12 |
20 | Islam Muhammad Nazmul | 12 |
21 | Dar Chen | 12 |
22 | Cidon Israel | 12 |
23 | Babaei Alireza | 12 |
24 | University Of Washington | 11 |
25 | Thyparambil Sheeno | 11 |
26 | Lee Heechoon | 11 |
27 | HP Printing And Computing Solutions SLU | 11 |
28 | Zohar Eyal | 10 |
29 | University Of Rochester | 10 |
30 | Silicon Valley Bank | 10 |
Source: ktMINE (www.ktmine.com)