IBM SVP and Director of Research Darío Gil says the company will stop pursuing numeric patent leadership and focus instead on open innovation and collaboration
For 29 years straight, IBM has led the United States in minting patents, at its peak filing over 10,000 US patent applications … Tweets: @trengriffin , @ibmnews , and @rossmauri Tweets: Tren Griffin / @trengriffin : @Noahpinion Even IBM doesn't care much about patents any more. The idea that anyone can measure technological progress with an analysis of patents and papers is a triumph of hope over real world experience. Breakthroughs now are more often result of collaborative work.https://fortune.com/... @ibmnews : “That's why we're betting that you should account for the real-world impact of a given technology-not just how many patents were issued while building it.” Learn more from SVP of IBM Research @dariogila about IBM's shifted focus via @FortuneMagazine: https://fortune.com/... Ross Mauri / @rossmauri : As part of our relentless capacity for reinvention, @ibm decided in 2020 that we would no longer pursue the goal of numeric patent leadership. Why, after three decades, such a radical shift? One word: focus. https://fortune.com/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
For nearly three decades IBM treated the US patent crown as an annual proof point — 23 straight years on top by 2015, with Google and Apple already climbing the rankings behind it, and a peak of 9,130 grants in 2020 when Samsung was still second. Then came 2022: filings fell 44% to 4,743, Samsung took the lead with 8,513, and IBM's decades-long streak ended.
Darío Gil's announcement reframes that decline as deliberate strategy rather than retreat — IBM Research will now compete on open innovation and collaboration instead of filing volume, a notable pivot for the lab that defined the patent-leadership playbook.
First-order effects
- Samsung now holds the top US patent spot by default, inheriting a symbolic position IBM spent 29 years defending while IBM Research redirects effort from filing volume to collaborative and open output.
Second-order effects
- The annual patent-count leaderboard loses its most reliable anchor company, weakening the metric other firms — including Samsung and the climbers tracked as far back as the 2015 rankings — used to signal R&D strength.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, large-corporate innovation gets measured by real-world impact and open contribution rather than IP stockpiles, eroding patent volume as a proxy for technological leadership and pressuring rivals to defend or abandon the same metric.
The trend: Corporate R&D leadership is shifting from patent-count competition toward open, collaborative innovation, with IBM — the metric's longest-running champion — as the signal that the old scoreboard is being retired.