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

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)

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

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)

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