Samsung Electronics Co. maintained the same No. 2 rank it had kept up uninterrupted since 2006 in the list of top patent recipients in the United States this year.

U.S-based online media Quartz, citing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) data, reported that the Korean tech giant applied and won 4,143 patents in the U.S from January to Aug. 1 this year, coming in second after IBM Corp. with 5,797 patents.

Next came Intel Corp. and Google Inc. each with 2,064 and 1,775 registered patents. Microsoft Corp. was the fifth with 1,673 patents and Apple Inc. the sixth with 1,559 patents.

Samsung Electronics was also second-rich patents in aggregate number. The company has registered a total of 44,301 patents in the U.S. since 2010. IBM topped with a hoard of 53,926 patents.

Microsoft was next with a total of 22,304 patents, followed by Intel and Google with 15,187 and 14,900 patents, respectively. Apple had 13,183 patents.

Samsung Electronics’ patent hoard corresponds with its spending in research and development. Last year alone, it spent 14.8 trillion won ($13.1 billion) in R&D and applied for 5,629 patents in Korea and 15,193 patents overseas.

Ever since its first patent application in the U.S. in 1984, the household Korean technology corporate name has over 100,000 proprietary rights across the world. It applied for 1,636 proprietorships in product design alone in the U.S. last year.

Who applies for patents first is crucial for technology companies to stay ahead in competition. Samsung is patented mostly in its mainstay fields of smartphones, smart TVs, memory and system-on-chip semiconductors.

By Kim Dong-eun

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