IBM Loses Top Patent Spot After Decades as Leader
- Big Blue says shift mirrors wider transformation plan
- Chinese tech firms such as ByteDance saw sharpest increases
The IBM office in Foster City, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
International Business Machines Corp. dropped from the top spot for US patents in 2022, the first time in decades Big Blue hasn’t claimed the most in a year, signaling a strategy shift at the longtime intellectual property leader.
IBM’s patent count declined 44% to 4,743 patents in 2022, falling to No. 2 behind Samsung Electronics Co.’s 8,513, according to Harrity LLP’s Patent 300 list. Technologies such as semiconductors and hardware memory saw the largest drop in IBM patents, though the reduction was across all major types.