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Contact:          Tom Kivett                 

            Kivett & Company Communications

            (212) 727-2935          

            tkivett@kivettandco.com

 

 

IFI ISSUES LIST OF 2005’S TOP PATENT COMPANIES

 

2005 reveals a 12 percent decrease in patents granted;

Pharma and biotech also down; Perennial leader IBM sees slight decline

 

 

WILMINGTON , Del., Jan. 10, 2006 — Using proprietary, state-of-the art indexing and standardization technology, IFI Patent Intelligence, a Wolters Kluwer business, today issued its annual compilation of the top U.S. patent winners.  According to the analysis, the total number of U.S. patents issued in 2005 declined 12 percent compared to 2004.  This is the second year in a row to show a decrease — 2004 posted a 2.7 percent drop.

 

Even IBM Corp., which tops the list this year as it has for 13 straight years, saw a decline of more than 9 percent with 302 fewer patents than in 2004.  At 2,972 patents, IBM’s annual total falls below the 3,000 mark for the first time since 2001.   Canon andHewlett-Packard come in at number 2 and 3 respectively, but well below IBM.

 

The total number of pharmaceutical-related patents granted in 2005 decreased by 8 percent, while the number of applications published decreased by about 2 percent.  In the biotech industry, while there was a slight increase in the number of applications published, the number of actual patentsgranted declined by more than 10 percent. 

 

 


“What’s most interesting about these patent decreases is that the overall number of patent applications is actually rising,” said Darlene Slaughter, general manager of IFI Patent Intelligence.  “This leads us to believe that we’re not experiencing a real crisis of innovation but rather an enormous backlog of applications being processed.”

 

One of the reasons for the backlog, according to an annual report issued in Nov. 2005 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), is the increasing complexity of patent applications.  The report’s message from Jon W. Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, states, “Our office now receives many patent applications on CD-ROM, containing millions of pages of data.  In short, the volume and complexity of patent applications continues to outpace current capacity to examine them.  The result is a pending — and growing — application backlog of historic proportions.”

 

While most companies are seeing a dip in patent activity there are several notable gainers including Microsoft, which is up more than 18 percent; Broadcom, up more than 38 percent; and Freescale Semiconductor, up a remarkable 88 percent over the 2004 counts.  The University of California leads the biotech category in an overall position of 40 with a total of 410 patents.  Other top medical and pharma contenders include Medtronic in the surgical and medical apparatus category, and Pfizer in bio-drugs and pharmaceuticals.

 

Although all patent information is public domain, the powerful indexing algorithms and search tools available using the CLAIMS® database make searching for patent data infinitely more efficient and accurate.  The collection of databases known as CLAIMS ® represents the most reliable, text-searchable and value-added databases of U.S. patents in the world.  IFI’s CLAIMS® databases are available on ThomsonDialog, STN International and Questel•Orbit.

 

For more than 50 years, IFI has built a solid reputation as the preeminent producer of patent databases.  A list of the 2005 top-25performers compiled by IFI using its CLAIMS® database follows:

 

 

TOP 55 ISSUING COMPANIES FOR 2005

 

 

Rank

Company Name

Patents

 

 

1

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP

2972

2

CANON K K JP

1837

3

HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT CO L P

1801**

4

MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO LTD JP

1720

5

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD KR

1645

6

MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC

1561

7

INTEL CORP

1551

8

HITACHI LTD JP

1293

9

TOSHIBA CORP JP

1288

10

FUJITSU LTD JP

1168

11

SONY CORP JP

1149

12

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO

906

13

SEIKO EPSON CORP JP

888

14

INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES AG DE

804

15

KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS ELECTRONICS N V NL

767

16

BOSCH, ROBERT GMBH DE

758

17

FUJI PHOTO FILM CO LTD JP

755

18

MICROSOFT CORP

746

19

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC

736

20

HONDA MOTOR CO LTD JP

730

21

SIEMENS AG DE

693

22

NEC CORP JP

673

23

SUN MICROSYSTEMS INC

654

24

DENSO CORP JP

645

25

MITSUBISHI DENKI K K JP

629

26

RENESAS TECHNOLOGY CORP JP

612

27

EASTMAN KODAK CO

578

28

AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC

562

29

ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES INC

529

30

SHARP K K JP

493

31

RICOH CO LTD JP

471

32

LG ELECTRONICS INC KR

463

33

HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC

462

34

MOTOROLA INC

461

35

TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO TW

441

36

CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC

439

37

XEROX CORP

430

38

3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES CO

418

39

BROADCOM CORP

414

40

CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF REGENTS

410

41

DELPHI TECHNOLOGIES INC

409

42

LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES INC

406

43

BOEING CO THE

404

44

GENERAL MOTORS CORP

393

45

HYNIX SEMICONDUCTOR INC KR

382

46

NORTEL NETWORKS LTD CA

375

47

SANYO ELECTRIC CO LTD JP

359

48

APPLIED MATERIALS INC

353

49

LSI LOGIC CORP

340

50

NOKIA AB OY FI

337

51

TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET L M ERICSSON SE

330

52

LG PHILIPS LCD CO LTD KR

320

53

OKI ELECTRIC INDUSTRY CO LTD JP

319

54

TOYOTA JIDOSHA K K JP

311

55

PROCTER & GAMBLE CO THE

297

 

** total includes 10 patents issued to Hewlett-Packard Co
 

 

Complete information on more than 1,800 companies worldwide that received 10 or more U.S. patents in 2005 will be published in IFI’s Patent Intelligence and Technology Report, available in May.  IFI produces monthly electronic updates of the report that monitor current patenting activity throughout the year.  For ordering information, contact IFI at 800-331-4955 or visit www.ificlaims.com.

 

# # #

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  For additional factoids, the full top-50 list, a detailed breakdown of a specific sector or to set an interview with IFI’s Darlene Slaughter, please contact Tom Kivett at 212-727-2935.

 

About Wolters Kluwer Health

 

Wolters Kluwer Health (Conshohocken, Pa.) is a leading provider of information for professionals and students in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry. Major brands Include IFI Patent Intelligence for patent services; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins and Facts & Comparisons for medical and drug reference tools and textbooks; Ovid Technologies, Medi-Span and SKOLAR for electronic information; and Adis International and Source for pharmaceutical information.

 

Wolters Kluwer is a leading multinational publisher and information services company. The Company's core markets are spread across the health, corporate services, finance, tax, accounting, law, regulation, and education sectors. Wolters Kluwer has annual revenues (2004) of €3.3 billion, employs approximately 18,400 people worldwide and maintains operations across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Wolters Kluwer is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands . Its depositary receipts of shares are quoted on the Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices.

 

For more information, visit www.ificlaims.com and www.wkhealth.com.