2025 S&P 100 Trends & Insights

IFI CLAIMS’ S&P 100 ranks large cap U.S. patent holders by active patent families owned by a company at a given moment in time. What exactly is the meaning of “active patent family?” In the patent industry, the term “family” refers to a single invention and its collection of patents filed worldwide to protect it—protection in several jurisdictions is a good indicator of a wide-ranging market for the invention. The more countries where an advancement is legally defendable, the stronger the patent family. IFI only measures “active” families in its methodology because they’re not yet expired and therefore remain in force. The market opens to competitors once a patent protection period (about 20 years) ends, so active patents help keep innovative companies in lead positions. This ranking is based on IFI’s proprietary Ultimate Owner methodology, which takes into account all subsidiaries under the umbrella of a parent organization and the patents that each hold. The rankings below measure global patent assets on November 3, 2025. Here are some insights from our latest list. 

S&P 100 companies claiming the most patent families

When it comes to U.S. corporations protecting inventions, Big Blue has long been the most prominent player. This year’s ranking has IBM at the top of the list yet again with 37,407 active patent families around the globe, followed by Qualcomm (29,746) and Microsoft (29,640). IBM could reign supreme in the ranking for years to come, but the number of its patent families have taken quite a dive since IFI last put out this ranking—down by more than 5,600. That’s not a corporate stumble, but rather an intentional shift in patent strategy. In 2023, IBM announced that it would no longer seek to patent the most inventions but would place more of its focus on a few key technologies. Among them: AI, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing. Microsoft also has some 2,200 fewer patent families this time around. But here is one recent 2024 application for quantum data lookup. The patent is still pending. This Microsoft patent granted earlier this year covers a system for digital items in a decentralized storage structure. 

Qualcomm, in contrast, is heading up. The semiconductor and software company has accumulated many more active patent families (up by more than 5,900). Here is one pending Qualcomm application for an object detecting system. All of this increased invention has surely contributed to Qualcomm’s recent stock jump after the company announced new chips that take aim at Nvidia’s offerings. 

Also notching gains: Amazon, RTX, Apple, and Alphabet. Here is an Amazon patent granted this year for query structure inputs and outputs. Earlier this year, RTX put forth this application for a telescoping guide vane.

Just one entity in the S&P 100 lacks a portfolio, and that’s Simon Property Group, the owner of shopping malls and outlet centers. The number of active patent families for this company is the same this year as in previous ones: zero. 

S&P 100 companies growing their families 

The decision to patent inventions is an important and pricey one, not to be taken lightly. A patent puts a potentially valuable invention in the public domain, as opposed to a trade secret, for instance. So enlarging the patent portfolio to add more members has both R&D investment and strategic implications. By sheer numbers, the company that has grown its patent family the most is Qualcomm, which, as noted above, is making strides in the chip race. But look at athletic footwear and apparel company Nike. It added more than 1,600 patent families to its collection, putting it in fifth place behind RTX, Amazon, and Apple. Here is a patent filed by Nike in 2024 (still pending) for regulating digital assets on varied virtual platforms. The system converts an asset like a sneaker into a crypto token and records it on a blockchain ledger. What for? Well, apparently wearing your digital CryptoKicks in an online basketball game, for example, might give you an edge over other players. Here is another Nike patent still pending along the same lines. 

Three major financial institutions—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Capital One—added robust patent numbers in this ranking (more on that below). And chip powerhouse Nvidia tallied up another 885 patent families. Recent Nvidia patent applications include this one for images in 3D environments and this one for segmenting objects in LiDAR point clouds. Both are still pending. 

Broadcom may be soaring in the stock market, but it took a nosedive in the number of patent families in the ranking—down more than 3,300. Same goes for Oracle. Its stock temporarily rode high thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, but the company’s patent families have declined by 1,827. The company did recently welcome this addition to the family: a framework patent for language modeling. It was granted late last year. 

Patents, by percent 

Which companies are extending their patent family circles the most by percentage gain? On that score, investment management firm BlackRock lands in first place with 96%, but is growing from a base of few patents, such as this data integration innovation. Starbucks is second with 94% growth since IFI’s last ranking. The coffeemaker’s portfolio is on the smaller side. Still, Starbucks’ active families have increased from 93 to 180. Recent additions? This patent granted this year for coordinating computing devices that tell hardware devices to, for instance, dispense coffee. And this patent, also granted this year, for a smart radio frequency identification system used in display. And this invention, still pending, for a freezer bin that can sense the level of ice contained inside. 

UnitedHealth made a strong showing with a 78% increase. One of the company’s patents, granted just a few weeks ago, is a method for improving training for question-answer machine learning. Another, now pending, is for an authentication system. Salesforce increased by a robust 36%, from 2,590 patent families to 3,530. Two of the CRM company’s pending patents are for integrating social network messages and for substantiating output from generative AI. 

Taking patents to the bank

High finance has been banking more patents in recent years. Among S&P 100 patent holders moving up on the ranking, three banks stand out: JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, and Bank of America all increased their active patent families by handsome margins—both in sheer numbers and percentage gains. Financial institutions have come a long way from brick-and-mortar branches and paper checks. So it stands to reason that they need to innovate in ways that keep money moving with ever greater speed and impenetrable security. Moreover, the shapeshifting going on with currency has banks now inventing along the lines of blockchain and crypto. 

On the surface, the foremost technologies for JPMorgan Chase are semiconductor memory devices and erasable, electrically programmable, read-only memories (EEPROM) in various forms. But a deeper dive into its patents show a portfolio made up of many inventions that were not created by the bank itself, but simply held either as a collateral agent or administrative agent, most likely as security for a loan. By attaching patents in this way, JPMorgan Chase appears to grasp the swing in corporate value from tangible assets (property, plant, and equipment) to intangibles (patents, trademarks, and copyrights). According to the most recent Ocean Tomo Intangible Asset Market Value Study, these intangibles make up 90% of the S&P’s market value, up from 17% in 1975—a seismic shift. 

IFI CLAIMS took a sampling of the bank’s patents over the past two years and saw that a majority of them are some sort of collateral reassignment as opposed to organic invention. In this compression garment filed by Under Armour, for instance, the patent was assigned to JPMorgan Chase as administrative agent this past July. This Ouraring patent was briefly assigned to the bank in May. As for JPM’s own inventions, here is a risk management system filed in 2024. And here is a method for managing dynamic messaging, granted just a couple months ago.  

Whatever the origins of JPM’s patents, the information contained in the documents holds important clues for investors attempting to perform diligence on the soundness of the underwriting and the innovation of its own technology. The financial behemoth isn’t protecting every single one of its inventions though. In 2021, as part of a pledge originated by Microsoft, Facebook, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, JPMorgan Chase opened up four of its patents covering cooling data centers to others implementing low carbon technologies. 

What patent technologies are in Capital One’s portfolio? Machine learning, as seen in this pending patent for electronic document validation and this one for automated dataset reduction. Contactless and RFID payments are high up too. And what’s in a Capital One employee’s wallet? More cash for anyone coming up with an idea that leads to a patent. Capital One is an inventive financial institution, prominently appearing in unexpected places with its patents. A recent IFI analysis on artificial intelligence (both generative and agentic) showed Captial One pioneering innovations on this frontier right up there with IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia with patents that could make serious bank as AI proliferates. 

Likewise, Bank of America encourages a culture of innovation. The company counts 7,800 inventors in its ranks over 14 countries and 42 U.S. states. According to a company statement, 17 percent of its patent portfolio is centered around AI and machine learning. IFI’s analysis shows machine learning as Bank of America’s chief technology, followed by cryptographic arrangements and attack signature detection. This patent granted a few months ago is for a platform designed for constructing and administering non-fungible tokens or NFTs. 

S&P 100 newcomers

As the stock market turns, so do the life and times of U.S. megacaps. This past September, ride-hailing company Uber Technologies joined the S&P 100, replacing Charter Communications. Earlier this year, big data software corporation Palantir, workflow software company ServiceNow, and robotics biotech Intuitive Surgical joined the S&P 100, replacing Dow, Kraft Heinz, and Ford Motor. Accounting and tax prep software maker Intuit made the cut during 2024, replacing Exelon. 

Palantir, a company that attracts controversy because it sells its software to government clients, has been on a tear. In the last year alone, the stock is up over 160%. Over the past five years, Palantir has applied for nearly 1,300 patents around the globe and has received some 1,200 grants. Information retrieval of relational data, whether geographical, visual, or query results, are a main technology for the company. So are input and output interactions between computer and user. This patent for an interactive data analysis system was granted in 2014, as was this interactive geospatial map patent. A year later, this method for analyzing an entity’s performance earned grant status. Note the frequency of these patents’ assignations to financial institutions over the span of its active status—Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, Wells Fargo.  

Another newcomer to IFI’s S&P 100 is ServiceNow. The company applied for nearly 1,300 patents in the past five years, and received more than 1,100 grants over the same time frame. Machine learning, management of data switching networks, and handling natural language information are ServiceNow’s main technology leanings. Worth noting: ServiceNow has revamped its patent application process in order to improve speed and efficiency with something called an Invention Disclosure Form app. Since adopting the app, the patent team processes 150 patents per year, spending 4 hours on each patent. Before the new system, patent processing averaged 80 per year at 10 hours per patent. Intuit, meanwhile, submitted nearly 1,700 applications over the past 5 years, and secured close to 1,400 grants. Machine learning, by far, is Intuit’s main technology, followed by tax prep and natural language data know-how. Here is one of the company’s active patents for a method of displaying a financial report.

As for Uber, the company filed more than 1,500 applications over the same time period and received more than 1,100 grants. Uber’s principal technologies center around information and communications adapted for tourism, control of vehicle positions, and ride sharing. This pending patent filed in partnership with Joby Aviation this past May is for a user feedback system that improves the quality of aerial rides. For Intuitive Surgical, the tech focus is squarely on surgical robotics and leader-follower robots. (For more information on Intuitive, see IFI’s robotics study here.)