Massive Investment in IPRs

Samsung Electronics invests massively in intellectual property rights.

Samsung Electronics holds more than 200,000 patents worldwide.

The company held 205,816 patents as of the end of June 2021, according to a half-year report it released on Aug. 22. This was a 4.1 percent increase from 197,749 patents it held at the end of 2020. Nearly 7,000 patents had been added to Samsung Electronics’ patent list since the first quarter of 2021.


By country, Samsung Electronics had the largest number of patents (80,633) in the United States, followed by Korea (44,271), Europe (39,288), China (18,879) and Japan (9,584). In other countries, the Korean tech giant had 13,161 patents.

Most patents were related to smartphones, smart TVs, memory semiconductors, and system large scale integration (LSI). They are or will be used for Samsung Electronics' strategic business products in the future.

Samsung Electronics and other major Samsung affiliates faced more than 400 patent lawsuits in the United States over the past five years from 2017 to May 2021, said the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency.

As a result, Samsung Electronics is focusing on securing a wide patent protection network. In the first half of 2021, Samsung Electronics invested 11 trillion won in R&D for intellectual property rights, a record high for the first half of a year. The amount of investment in intellectual property rights (IPRs) stood at the 8 trillion won range in 2018. But it has been on a steady rise. It crossed 10 trillion won in 2019. Last year, 21.2 trillion won was invested in intellectual property rights and the figure may exceed 22 trillion won in 2021.

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