IBM Tops US Patent Recipients List Again

(RTTNews) - Technology giant International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) once again topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients, garnering a record 7,534 patents in 2014.

This also marks the 22nd consecutive year that IBM has been on top of the list, compiled by IFI Claims Patent Services, a unit of Fairview Research. Big Blue also became the first company to surpass 7,000 patents in a single year.

Despite having a relatively poor year in terms of revenue in 2014, IBM invested heavily in research and development.

"IBM's continued investment in research and development is key to driving the transformation of our company, as we look to capture the emerging opportunities represented by cloud, big data and analytics, security, social and mobile," said Ginni Rometty, IBM's chairman, president and CEO.

During its 22 years atop the patent list between 1993 and 2014, IBM has received more than 81,500 U.S. patents.

Like the one in 2013, the 2014 list has South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. and Japan's Canon Inc. at the second and third positions, respectively. Sony Corp. of Japan and U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) rounded up the top five in that order.

Two more U.S. companies - chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) and Internet giant Google Inc. (GOOGL, GOOG) - figure among the top ten in the list. Apple Inc. (AAPL) just missed the top ten. The iPhone and iPad maker was at the 11th place just ahead of conglomerate General Electric Co. (GE).

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted an all-time high of 300,678 patents in 2014, up more than 8% from the previous year.