South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. received the second largest patent grants in the United States with its tech rival LG Electronics Inc. grabbing the seventh spot in the list.

According to the list of the ‘Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents in 2018’ released by the U.S. Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) last month, Samsung Electronics came in second by registering 5,836 patents, up 0.4 percent from 2017. IBM topped the list for the 12th consecutive year with 9,088 patents.

The world’s top smartphone and memory chip maker was followed by Cannon with 3,206 grants, General Electric 2,769, Intel 2,728, Alphabet 2,597, LG Electronics 2,473, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 2,448, Microsoft 2,385 and Qualcomm 2,300. Apple failed to make the top 10 list but ranked 11th with 2,147 patents.

LG Electronics climbed one spot from 2017 to seventh last year despite a 9 percent decrease in the number of patent grants in the U.S. Other Korean names in the list included Samsung Display which ranked 17th, Hyundai Motor 22nd, SK Hynix 45th, LG Display 53rd, LG Chem 61st and LG Innotek 87th.

In the top 10 list, six companies were from the U.S., two from Korea and one from each Japan and Taiwan. It was a remarkable turn of events for Japanese companies because they had accounted for the largest share in the same top 10 list a decade ago in 2008 with Hitach coming in 3rd, Cannon 4th, Panasonic 7th, Toshiba 8th, Fujitsu 9th and Sony 10th.

In 2013, five Japanese firms were still included in the top 10 list, but almost all of them failed to make the list last year. Toyota ranked 13th in the number of patent grants in the U.S., Sony 18th, Seiko Epson 24th, Panasonic 27th, Mitsubishi 29thand Toshiba 30th.

By Hwang Soon-min and Choi Mira

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