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Interesting Facts About IBM’s 2011 Patent Production

IBM today announced that it set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marking the 19th consecutive year that the company has led the annual list of patent recipients. IBM inventors earned a record 6,180 U.S. patents in 2011, more than quadrupling Hewlett-Packard’s issuances and exceeding by six times those of Oracle/Sun.

More than 8,000 IBMers residing in 46 different U.S. states and 36 countries are responsible for the company’s record-breaking 2011 patent tally. IBM inventors who reside outside the U.S. collaborated with U.S. inventors on more than 26% of the company’s patents in 2011.

The more than 6,000 patents IBMers received in 2011 represent a range of inventions that enable new innovations and add significant value to the company’s products, services, including smarter solutions for retail, banking, healthcare, transportation and other industries. These patented inventions also span a wide range of computing technologies poised to support a new generation of more cognitive, intelligent and insight-driven systems, processes and infrastructures for smarter commerce, shopping, medicine, transportation, and more.

But did you know that:

1. IBM Systems & Technology Group (2,800 patents) would have ranked fourth on the list of Top Ten U.S. Patentees in 2011, about 20 patents behind 3rd  place Canon. STG’s 2011 patent total exceeded the combined patent output of Hewlett-Packard and Intel. Note that HP and Intel plummeted off the Top Ten list in 2011 to #14 and #16, respectively.
2. IBM Research (1,360 patents) and Software Group (1,275 patents) would have each ranked among the Top 20 patent recipients in 2011 with Research ranking above Hewlett-Packard and Software Group ahead of Intel.  The Software Group received more patents in 2011 than Oracle, Symantec, Computer Associates, BMC Software and SAS Institute combined.
3. The 1,065 patents received by IBM’s Austin location would place it 19th among all patentees in 2011.  IBM Austin outranked Texas Instruments and received more than twice as many patents as Freescale Semiconductor and more than quadruple Dell’s total.
4. IBM’s Austin and Yorktown Heights locations would have ranked in the Top 20 patent recipients of 2011.
5. IBM Rochester’s 500 patents made it the leading patentee in Minnesota with almost 10% more patents than 2nd place 3M Innovative Properties and 3rd place Boston Scientific/Scimed and more than 25% more than 4th place Medtronic..
6. Four IBM sites in New York – East Fishkill, Endicott, Poughkeepsie and Yorktown Heights – received a total of 2,445 patents in 2011. This made them the leading patentee in the state with almost 70% more patents than number two, General Electric. In fact, the four sites earned more patents in 2011 than GE, Kodak and the next five New York companies (Corning, Round Rock Research, American Express, Symbol Technologies and Computer Associates) combined. The 2,445 patents issued to the four sites would have placed them 6th in the Top Ten just behind Toshiba and well ahead of Microsoft.
7. IBM’s sites in Raleigh and Charlotte North Carolina generated 645 patents in 2011 making IBM the leading patentee in the state with more than three times as many patents as 2nd place, Cree Inc., and 3rd place, Red Hat, combined and more than 20 times the number of patents received by SAS Institute.
8. IBM’s Almaden, San Jose and Silicon Valley Lab locations in California received a total of 595 patents in 2011. This would have ranked them ahead of  Oracle, Yahoo!, Netapp, Xylinx, Symantec, Rambus and VMware among California patentees.
9. IBM Burlington’s 385 patents made it the leading patentee in Vermont earning more than four times as many patents as received by all other organizations in the state.
10. IBM’s Tucson site received 325 patents in 2011 making it the top patentee in Arizona. IBM Tucson earned more patents than the combined total of the next six companies (Semiconductor Component Industries, Amkor Technology, Go Daddy Group, Microchip Technology, Karsten Manufacturing and ASM America).
11. IBM Global Service inventors received 615 patents in 2011— more than triple the combined total received by Accenture, SAS Institute, Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy, CSC and Perot Systems.
12. IBM’s Haifa Research Lab received 65 patents in 2011 placing it 2nd only to   Sandisk IL Ltd. among Israeli recipients of U.S. Patents.