January 08, 1999
99-1

MEDIA ADVISORY 99-1

IBM REPEATS AT TOP OF PTO's ANNUAL LIST OF 10 ORGANIZATIONS RECEIVING MOST PATENTS

PRESS RELEASE

1998 Top Ten Corporations Receive 50% More Patents Than 1997's Top Ten.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) today announced the top ten private sector patent recipients for the 1998 calendar year. Listed below are the ten corporations receiving the most patents for inventions in 1998, along with their ranking last year. For the sixth straight year, IBM received more utility patents than any other private sector organization. The 1998 top ten corporations combined to receive 14,815 patents, a nearly 50% increase over the 10,162 patents granted to 1997's top ten.

(Final Rank)(Final Number of)

Rank in 1998 # of Patents Organization (in 1997) (Patents in 1997)

12,657International Business Machines Corporation (1)(1,724)

21,928Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (2)(1,381)

31,627NEC Corporation (3)(1,095)

41,406Motorola Inc. (4)(1,058)

51,316Sony Corporation (10) (859)

61,304Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (17) (582)

71,189Fujitsu Limited (6) (903)

81,170Toshiba Corporation (9) (862)

91,124Eastman Kodak Company (11) (795)

101,094Hitachi, Ltd. (6) (903)

The ten organizations with the most patents in 1998 represent three U.S. corporations, six Japanese corporations, and one corporation from the Republic of Korea. Agencies of the U.S. Government received a total of 1,017 patents in 1998, up from 935 in 1997.

NOTE : The listed patent counts for 1998 are preliminary counts which are subject to correction. The final listing of 1998 patent counts for the top ten should be available by early April. These statistics reflect patent ownership at the time the patent was granted and do not include changes in ownership which may have occured after the patent was issued. Where there is more than one owner named on a patent, the patent is attributed to the first-named assignee.

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