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