IFI 250: Largest Global Patent Holders

The IFI CLAIMS Ultimate Owner ranking is a completely different view of patent holdings. Rather than looking at the grants received in a given year, as the Top 50 ranking does, the Ultimate Owner ranking looks at the current cumulative patent holdings.

The Ultimate Owner report ranks parent companies by the active patent families they own. The holdings of subsidiary companies are included in the parent company's holdings.

Learn more about how this list is calculated

The Global 250 expands the scope of IFI ranking in a couple of important ways. Previous ranking are based on the actual legal entity that is referenced in the patent records. The Global 250 ranks based on the Ultimate Owner of these entities. So Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is not a single entity but a collection of 155 subsidiaries owned by Samsung.

In addition we rank the Global 250 by active patent families. The patent family is a collection of global patent filings related to a single invention. So Ford invents some new self-driving tech and files related patent applications in 10 countries. For us that represents one patent family. Further we only count patent families that are active – that contain at least one current, granted patent. This is a patent that can be enforced and that has not expired.

Finally we only count active families that are currently owned by the Ultimate Owner. This provides us with a reliable way of quantifying the patent assets (inventions) currently owned by a corporate entity. The Global 250 ranks the portfolios of the world's largest organizations which are primarily publicly traded corporations almost all of which report "intangible assets" on their balance sheets – a mysterious number that is intended to reflect perceived value of assets like patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property. IFI's Global 250 provides a fresh glimpse into a company's intellectual property assets.