Top 20 US patent holders pose for an interesting infographic

A detailed infographic displays the top patent holders in the United States, following the recent report showing that Canon remained the top Japanese company in US patent rankings last year.

Top 20 US patent holders infographic dominated by camera makers. (Click on the image to make it bigger)

Chipworks has compiled a nice infographic depicting the top 20 USPTO patent holders in 2012 and comparing them to the top 20 patent holders from 2000. IBM remained the leader for the 20th consecutive year, however the top 5 wouldn’t have looked differently, if it weren’t for the uprising of camera manufacturers.

Top 20 US patent holders in 2012 infographic

IBM was the top patent holder with 6478 patents in 2012, followed by Samsung with 5081 patents, Canon with 3174, Sony with 3032, and Panasonic with 2769. There are four camera manufacturers in the top five, three of them being headquartered in Japan.

The remainder of the top 10 does not feature too many Japanese companies or photography-related entities, except for Toshiba which came 7th with 2447 patents. The 6th spot was taken by Microsoft with 2613 patents, the 8th place by Foxconn with 2013, the 9th by General Electric with 1652 patents, while the 10th place was reserved by LG Electronics with 1624 patents.

Other photography-related companies can be found in the rest of the top 20, including Fujitsu which came 11th with 1535 patents. The 12th spot was taken by R-D1 digital finder’s maker, Seiko Epson, with 1461 patents, Hitachi with 1436, Ricoh with 1436, while Hewlett-Packard aka HP was 15th with 1394 patents.

General Motors ranked 16th with 1377 patents, chip-maker Qualcomm came 17th with 1292 patents, Intel “chipzilla” grabbed the 18th place, followed by Toyota with 1285 patents, and, finally, Broadcom took the 20th spot with 1157 patents.

Top 20 US patent holders in 2000 infographic

The situation was very different in 2000, although IBM still ruled USPTO’s world with 2886 patents. Back then, NEC was second with 2021 patents, while Canon grabbed its usual third place with 1890 patents. The number of submitted patents has increased since 2000, but camera manufacturers have remained among the most innovative companies in the United States.

Samsung was fourth with 1441 patents, Sony was 6th with 1385, Toshiba ranked 8th with 1232, Fujitsu came 10th with 1147, Panasonic was 11th with 1137, and Philips closed the list with 693 patents. An interesting fact about the top 20 list from 200o is Kodak’s presence with 875 patents, enough to propel the now-bankrupt company to the 17th place.