South Korea stayed third in the national count in patent authorization in the United States last year, with Samsung Electronics keeping to No. 2 rank after IBM for the 14th consecutive year.

According to U.S. patent data provider IFI Claims, U.S. names took up the largest 49 percent share in the total 333,530 patents newly registered in the U.S. last year, followed by Japanese origins with 16 percent and Koreans’ with 7 percent.

Samsung Electronics held 6,471, the second largest among all corporate names for the past 14 years. IBM topped the list for the 27th consecutive year with 9,262. Canon came third with 3,548, followed by Microsoft with 3,081, and Intel with 3,020.

LG Electronics dropped one notch to the sixth with 2,805, trailed by Apple, Ford, Amazon and Huawei. Hyundai Motor ranked 20th, down one notch from the previous year, with 1,505, while its sibling Kia Motors jumped 58 places to the 41st with 921.

In the rank on the global counts of patents by parent company including subsidiaries, Samsung Electronics ranked top with 76,638 active patent families, beating IBM with 37,304, Canon with 35,724, General Electric and Microsoft. The list shows the size of a patent owner’s global portfolio based on the number of currently-held active patent families.

The top U.S. patent recipients ranking provides insight into innovation and who is developing new intellectual property and the global patent assets report giver some perspective on the relative size and strength of corporate patent portfolios, said IFI Claims.

By Pulse

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