Assignee

Companies with most patents in the US and who owns them today

The companies with the most US patents are large electronics, computing, automotive and telecommunications groups that file thousands of applications a year. For close to three decades IBM received more US patents each year than any other company, and in recent years Samsung Electronics has led the annual count. Top Assignees explains the two ways to count them from the public USPTO record: patents granted in a year and patents held today.

Look up the patents of any company

Search a company by name in the patent assignee search to see every US patent it holds as owner of record, under its current and former names. The result shows when each patent came to the company, through which recorded assignment, and whether a security interest is still open, so you can compare what a company was granted with what it holds after its sales and acquisitions.

Granted in a year and held today

The usual ranking counts patents granted to each company in a calendar year, based on the assignee named at grant. It shows who is filing and winning patents now. A count by owner of record credits each patent to the company that holds it today according to recorded assignments, which includes patents it bought and leaves out patents it sold. The two counts differ, and the difference shows who builds portfolios by acquisition.

How each count is calculated

  • Source: utility patents granted by the USPTO and the assignment records published by the USPTO.
  • Granted count: each patent is counted once for the assignee named at grant in the calendar year.
  • Held today count: each in force patent is counted once for its current owner of record.
  • Names: spellings, legal suffixes and recorded name changes of the same entity are combined.
  • Corporate groups: subsidiaries are combined with the parent where a recorded merger or common ownership in the record connects them.
  • Excluded: patents with no assignee, which are held by individual inventors.

Why companies with the most patents matter to you

  • They are the most frequent licensors and plaintiffs in many technologies.
  • Their buying and selling moves the market for patents in a field.
  • Their portfolios are where most unrecorded name changes and old liens hide.

Follow any of these companies with patent monitoring and see every acquisition, sale and lien as it is recorded.

Look up any company by name

Search every patent a company holds today, including former names and subsidiaries.