IBM Wins Most Patents — Again — but Google and Apple Climb in Rankings
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2015 snapshot lands mid-streak: IBM had just extended what would become a decades-long run at the top of the USPTO rankings, a run that continued through its record 8,088 patents in 2016 and held as late as the 9,130 grants that kept it first in 2020.
The story's real signal is in the climbers: Google and Apple rising in the ranks marks the moment consumer internet and device companies started out-filing traditional enterprise incumbents — a shift that culminated when Samsung overtook IBM after IBM's 44% patent drop in 2022 as the company deliberately refocused on core businesses.
First-order effects
- Google and Apple's climb means their patent portfolios are growing fastest exactly where mobile, search, and devices intersect — strengthening their hand in cross-licensing talks and defensive positioning against each other and Samsung.
- IBM's continued #1 finish keeps intact the annual marketing asset its research organization has built around topping the list, even as rivals close the absolute gap.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's sustained high-volume filing, already visible behind IBM in this era, pressures every top-10 company to keep grant counts up or risk weaker negotiating positions in smartphone and component patent disputes.
- As software and internet firms climb, patent metrics increasingly reward product-cycle filing over long-horizon research, forcing IBM-style corporate labs to justify output by business line rather than raw totals.
Third-order effects
- The pattern that ends with IBM surrendering the top spot in 2022 points toward patent leadership becoming rotational rather than dynastic — a function of whichever company's current strategy happens to be filing-heavy, not a permanent fixture of one incumbent.
- If volume-based rankings persist as the public scoreboard, expect more companies to treat annual patent counts as an explicitly managed KPI, decoupling the number from underlying invention quality.
The trend: US corporate patent leadership is rotating from enterprise-era incumbents like IBM toward consumer internet and device giants, until even the streak-holders choose strategy over the top slot.