February 19, 2021

IPO & Harrity Analytics Release List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2020

McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP

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Last month, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) and Harrity Analytics announced the release of the 38th annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. utility patents (see "IPO & Harrity Analytics Release List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2019"). Patent Docs readers may recall that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stopped releasing its annual list of top patent recipients in 2006 in order to "discourag[e] any perception that we believe more is better."

As with the 2019 report, the 2020 report was compiled in collaboration with Harrity Analytics, based on data obtained from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The IPO and Harrity Analytics noted that patents reported on the 2020 list are utility patents granted during the 2020 calendar year that listed the organization or a subsidiary as the owner on the printed patent document. Harrity Analytics then used organization and subsidiary data provided to two independent third-party data providers and reviewed over 200,000 assignments to attribute ownership to the correct organizations, where applicable. The report notes that patents that were granted to two or more organizations jointly are attributed to each organization separately, and that companies for which patents were granted to subsidiaries are combined with patents granted to the parent.

The IPO and Harrity Analytics also noted that 352,469 patents were issued in 2020, down less than 1% from the 354,507 patents that issued in 2019. The top fifteen companies on the IPO Top 300 are listed below (click on table to expand):

* Merger of United Technologies and Raytheon.

Ford and Amazon fell out of the Top 15 in 2020. Ford dropped from 13th to 19th and Amazon dropped from 15th to 16th in 2020. Jumping into the Top 15 were Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. (18th to 9th) and Dell (16th to 12th). Also, Raytheon Technologies, resulting from a merger of United Technologies and Raytheon, was a new addition to the Top 15; in 2019, United Technologies ranked 8th with 2,847 patents and Ratheyon ranked 124th with 398 patents.

As in past years, Patent Docs used the IPO's list of top patent holders to compile a list of the top "life sciences" companies and organizations receiving U.S. utility patents in 2020. Each organization's IPO top 300 ranking for 2020 is indicated in the "2020 IPO Rank" column; the IPO top 300 ranking for 2019 (if available) is indicated in the "2019 IPO Rank" column; and the change in number of patents from 2019 is indicated in "% Change from 2019." The Life Sciences Top 54 is listed below (click on table to expand):

Please note that some of the companies and organizations listed above may be involved in work outside the life sciences sector, and therefore, a portion of the patents granted to these companies and organizations may be directed to other than life sciences-related inventions. Our list also includes medical device companies.

For additional information regarding this topic, please see:

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations. Attorney Advertising.