Top U.S. Patent Holders
Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are among the top 10 companies in patent registrations in the United States.
Samsung registered 5,836 patents in the United States in 2018, a 0.4 percent increase from a year ago, according to the 2018 top 300 companies and institutions in patent registrations in the United States announced by the U.S. Intellectual Property Office (IPO).
The Korean tech giant took second place after IBM with 9,088 patent registrations. The first and second place holders had not changed for the 12 years since 2007.
LG Electronics placed 7th with 2,473 patent registrations, making it to the top 10 for three consecutive years.
The top five list included Canon (3,206), General Electric (GE) (2,769), and Intel (2,728). Other companies that made the top 10 were Alphabet (2,597), TSMC (2,448), Microsoft (MS) (2,385) and Qualcomm (2,300). Apple came in 11th (2,147).
By country, the United States had six companies on the top 10 list, while Korea had two, Japan one and Taiwan one. In 2008, Japanese companies accounted for more than half of the companies in the top 10, including Hitachi (3rd), Canon (4th), Panasonic (7th), Toshiba (8th), Fujitsu (9th), and Sony (10th).
Korean companies in the top 100 list included Samsung Display (17th), one notch ahead of Sony, Hyundai Motors (22nd), SK Hynix (45th), LG Display (53rd), LG Chem (61st), and LG Innotek (87th). Japanese companies that were relegated from the top 10 were Toyota (13th), Sony (18th), Seiko Epson (24th), Panasonic (27th), Mitsubishi (29th) and Toshiba (30th).