IBM 4,169, Google 58: Top 2008 US Patentees

There’s nothing that can make you sit back, scratch your head, and wonder at the correlation between innovation and patents granted than looking at the top 300 list published by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, or IPO. This summary of how many utility patents companies received in the US last year was fascinating, both for those who racked them up and the corporations that didn’t. Some at the lower end of patent activity — Google, Yahoo, and even Apple — raise the question of whether they are properly protecting their intellectual activity, or if they are leaving themselves open to being outflanked by competitors.

Let’s start with a table of the top 25 recipients.

Notice how dominant high tech firms are. In fact, ignoring GE as a conglomerate for a moment, Honda seems to be the first name from a different industry. What I found surprising, though, were some of the top of mind tech stalwarts that were not top of list — in fact, that were toward the bottom.

Remember, these are utility patents — that is, those focused on a real invention and not design. So, for example, Apple received 254 patents, but many were design patents. What is surprising, though, is how relatively few patents these companies obtain, particularly compared to their competition, raising the question of what drives their intellectual property strategy. There are a number of approaches a company could take:

• IBM’s “book ‘em, Danno” playbook, where virtually everything seems to get sent in to the USPTO.
• A more measured approach of seeking protection for key developments, seen more in the middle of the IPO list, which reduces the costs of participation. For example, I’ve had top IP lawyers at EMS tell me that the company works IP protection on a specific budget, which drives them to focus on what can provide the greatest strategic return on spending.
• What we might call the “eat my stylish dust” concept, where much of the focus is on design and keeping far ahead of competitors in terms of products and technology implementations that are appealing to consumers.
• The “I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night” school, which, by the nature of its business, might have more limited natural utility patent outlets, particularly as the patent office seems to take a dimmer view on slippery areas like business methods.

There are still companies like Google and Yahoo and Apple that you’d think would be paying more attention to formal technology protection, but aren’t. It might be that Google, for example, is going more the trade secret route, doing new things in search but, because it’s all hosted, knowing that the mechanism isn’t available. By not patenting, Google avoids giving away insight into how it runs search … and, importantly, how companies could game the system.

But still, such companies are presumably developing technology in many areas. What if someone else files something similar first or comes up with some aspect that blocks what they do? This is where depending on speed or secrecy can be a dangerous tactic. The U.S. has a first-to-invent approach to patents, but does that do any good if the first inventor never files an application? It may be that they are leaving themselves vulnerable to an in-depth analysis of their patent holdings.

So far we’ve been looking at what companies did last year, so how active have they been during 2009? Here’s a chart with the top ten from 2008, the number of patents they’ve received so far this year, and how that compares for the number they received in the same period last year. Note that I’m including design patents here, because the USPTO search engine, which is supposed to be able to list only design patents (letting me subtract them from the overall number) doesn’t seem to be cooperating.

The variability is interesting, and in some cases it might make you wonder whether the differences represent past emphasis on major new technology roll-outs. And now for our notable laggers:

PTO image via Flickr user dkpto, CC 2.0.