IBM today announced it topped the list of U.S. patents received yearly for a 22nd consecutive year. With 7,534 patents in 2014—an average of 20 per day—IBM is the first company to surpass 7,000 patents within a year.
"IBM's continued investment in research and development is key to driving the transformation of our company, as we look to capture the emerging opportunities represented by cloud, big data and analytics, security, social and mobile," said Ginni Rometty, IBM's chairman, president and CEO. "IBM's patent leadership over more than two decades demonstrates our enduring commitment to the kind of fundamental R&D that can solve the most daunting challenges facing our clients and the world."
About 40 percent of its 2014 patents covered cloud computing, analytics, mobile, social, and security inventions.
In its 22 years as the No. 1 U.S. patent recipient, IBM inventors have received more than 81,500 U.S. patents. It exceeded the number of patents of its closest competitor in number of 2014 U.S. patents, Samsung, by more than 2,500 patents.
