2025 U.S. Trends & Insights

Patent Wrap-Up 2025

For the third year running, the principal story of corporate innovation has been the dash to invest in artificial intelligence. While AI has been a juggernaut in 2025, it hasn’t progressed without volatility. A Chinese company called DeepSeek upended the markets in January when its low-cost, high performing model sent tech stocks tumbling (chip company Nvidia lost $600 billion in a day). The effects weren’t lasting though. By July, Nvidia was the first company to achieve a market cap of $4 trillion. At the end of October, its value stood at $5 trillion, a clear symbol of the sway AI now exerts over the global economy—not to mention geopolitics as nations attempt to dominate the technology as a matter of national security. In the U.S., the government took a 10% stake in Intel this year. In December, the Trump administration agreed to allow Nvidia and other chip companies to export select units to China for a significant cut of the revenues (widely considered a highly unusual deal).

With AI powering the markets, patents made a cameo appearance in July when the Commerce Department floated the idea of levying new fees on patent holders based on the value of the patent, according to an article by the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called the notion “unprecedented.” In a letter to Congress, the Chamber noted the following: “Our ability to compete globally—especially in strategic technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence—depends on maintaining a patent system that rewards rather than penalizes, the creation of valuable IP.”

All of this is to say that AI is no passing technology fad; the advancement is making strides in its own right and making inroads into other developments along the lines of self-driving vehicles and robotics. Here at IFI CLAIMS, the world’s most trusted patent data provider, we can see some of that rise (and certainly decline) in the patents and the companies filing them. Below are the takeaways from our annual analysis of the Top 50 most inventive companies, measured by U.S. patent grants, and overall trends in U.S. patents for 2025.

Leader of the Pats

The top three spots in the 2025 U.S. patent rankings came in just the same as 2024. Samsung, the South Korean electronics maker placed first for the fourth year in a row with 7,054 patents, 11% more than the previous year. And notably, the company secured more than 2% of all granted patents in the United States. Semiconductor manufacturer TSMC took second with 4,194 patents, 5% higher than 2024, while San Diego-based tech giant Qualcomm ranked third with 3,749 patents, slightly up year-over-year. Other big moves into the top ten include Dell, higher by eight places, and Toyota, up six. Over the past five years, Toyota’s main areas of patent specialization have been driver warnings and interventions, energy storage, and rocking-chair batteries.

IBM, the computing stalwart that held top billing for 29 years before Samsung took the lead, continued its downward slide by three spots, settling into number 11. IBM’s descent has been dramatic over the last four rankings. In 2021, Big Blue garnered more than 8,600 grants. In 2025, that number stands at just under 2,200. But those numbers don’t necessarily tell the story of a company that is faltering on invention. Rather, IBM has adopted an intentional patent strategy that turns away from the pursuit of racking up the greatest number of grants and focuses instead on just a few key areas such as cloud computing and AI.

The best growth performer this year is South Korean company LG Energy, jumping 22 positions. The company has concentrated mainly on patents with battery storage technologies over the past five years. 

Down Go Grants, Down Go Applications

Patent grants peaked in 2019—just before the global pandemic roiled lives, businesses, and supply chains around the world. Since then, invention protections have turned downward, with a slight uptick last year. U.S. Grants receded in 2025 to 323,272, down -0.24% from the previous year. From the 2019 all-time-high, grants have declined a total of 9%. Applications, which hit a historic level last year of more than 430,000 also took a breather in 2025, down 9% to 393,344. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that companies are becoming less inventive. More than 1.2 million patent applications are currently sitting in the USPTO’s total patent application inventory, up 19% since the department’s 2020 fiscal year. This inventory includes patents at any stage of the prosecution process, including unexamined documents. So patent examiners are clearly still playing catchup. Separating out unexamined patents provides another clarifying data point. That pipeline hit a highwater mark in January 2025 of nearly 838,000 applications. The backlog currently stands at more than 788,000, down from some 813,000 at the same time last year. So the agency has been making up for lost time—helped, no doubt, by the fact that the USPTO kept operating during the longest U.S. government shutdown in history. Still, in 2018, the buildup was just 540,000 by comparison. As for patent pendency—the average number of months from filing date to decision—that number currently stands at 26.5 months, up slightly from the previous year, though up by more than three months since FY2020. To address these issues, the USPTO hired 800 new examiners in the latest fiscal year, but that hasn’t exactly swelled the ranks; the current number of patent examiners is lower than during the previous year. 

Countries of Patent Origin

U.S. companies once again claimed the highest number of U.S. patents, by far: 136,131, or just under half of the total patents awarded. Japan won the second highest number of patents with 15% of the pie, followed by China (11%), and South Korea (9%). Of European countries, Germany took home the highest number of U.S. grants with 14,150 or 5% of the overall, ranking fifth on the country list. All five of these countries’ ranks are a repeat of 2024.

Countries Gaining Patent Ground

Sure, patent rank by country is the same as the previous year. Nonetheless, the ground shifted significantly. Year-over-year, patent grants to U.S.-based companies declined more than 5%. That’s on top of a 4% drop last year, so the trend is downward when it comes to winning patent protection. Some of that downhill movement is intentional in the U.S. as companies use trade secrets for fast-moving technology or focus their R&D allocations to specific innovation areas such as AI. Japan, France, and Canada all decreased as well. As for patent risers, Taiwan made the biggest jump with a gain of more than 12%, followed by China (9.4%) and South Korea (8.4%).

Regional Patent Divisions

Countries, like companies, often jockey for position in the race for U.S. patents. The U.S. is one of the world’s most enviable patent jurisdictions, not to mention markets for products that are protected by inventions. Combining numbers by continent though sheds further light on which portions of the world are holding the most U.S. patents. North America earned the greatest number of grants in 2025 with 141,348 patents. Asia, meanwhile, generated 121,410 grants, while Europe took in 49,466. But North America’s takings in this arena continue to decline, dropping 5% in 2025 over 2024 (on top of the previous period’s 4% drop to boot). Asia increased slightly over the prior year, while Europe stayed largely flat. The long-term trend shows a shift in grants from west to east.

Technology Area Codes

The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system categorizes technologies that are embraced by inventions. Following the growth or reduction in use of these codes is one method analysts employ to forecast the quality of innovation in a company or industry pipeline. The foremost two technologies for granted patents in 2025 were the same as last year (and the two previous years, for that matter). G06F (electrical digital data processing) and H04L (transmission of digital information) come in first and second. They’re big and important technologies and likely will be for many years to come. But their appearance at the top of the heap once again is not necessarily a signal of status quo. Each one decreased significantly over the previous year—by 9% and 8% respectively. The largest technology class growers among granted U.S. patents were G06V (image or video recognition) and H01M (batteries) which increased 7% in both cases.

The biggest decliner: H01L (traditional semiconductors). That might be surprising considering how important these devices are to the growing investment in AI and how much of a national security issue semiconductors have become. But it’s important to understand that code H01L, though seen as the proxy for patents in the semiconductor industry, is not the only code covering the area. H01L is a code that leans into the silicon-based, conventional manufacturing and hardware aspects of chips. Nvidia, for example, holds relatively few patents under this particular code even though the company makes highly coveted chips (for more, see IFI’s semiconductor study here).

Another semiconductor code (H10D), which covers inorganic electric semiconductors, has appeared on IFI’s top 20 codes for granted U.S. patents this year. The CPC system, we should note, is dynamic; it grows and changes in much the same way as technology does. Code classification starting with H10 was extended several years ago to organize polymer-based semiconductors, as well as such emerging technologies as organic transistors and LEDs and novel memory devices or methods. H10D is a gradation of the CPC that includes the classification of inorganic devices, whether individual (transistors, diodes) or integrated (chips, functional circuits). Here, for example, is a Samsung patent granted in 2025 for a display device that lists H10D as one of the supporting CPC codes.

Applications, Coded

Patent grants give companies a monopoly with a ticking clock to make and market the novelties they’ve put so much of their R&D into. In turn, that gives investors some surety that a particular market is a done deal for some time (think pharmaceutical blockbusters, for instance). Patent applications, on the other hand, function in the market a little differently. Yes, they may earn protection status at some point in the future. But in the here and now, they notify investors and competitors about newer innovation turning points. In short, applications serve as a proxy for hot technologies.

As with grants, the most covered technologies among applications are also G06F (electrical digital data processing) and H04L (transmission of digital information). But, here again, they are dropping precipitously, down 7% and 11% from the previous year. In fact, all the technology codes among the top 20 are dropping year-over-year, except for one: H01M (conversion of chemical energy into electrical energy), up 6%.

And again, as with grants, semiconductor code H10D (see section above), has debuted onto the list of top 20 codes for U.S. patent applications this year. Chip manufacturer TSMC is the principal patenter in this area along with Samsung, IBM and Intel. One TSMC application filed in 2025 using code H10D is for this two-sided contact structure. Intel, meanwhile, filed this one for an integrated circuit with stiffeners.

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