Last week, patent data tracking firm IFI CLAIMS published its annual rankings of the Top 50 U.S. Patent Assignees and the Top 10 Fastest Growing Technologies of 2024, providing a snapshot of the world’s most innovative companies and rapidly advancing tech sectors by analyzing U.S. patent grants totals over the last calendar year. Although U.S. patent grants increased overall last year, pointing to the strength of the domestic market, foreign economic rival China continued to make significant gains in acquiring U.S. patents.
On January 12, patent database provider IFI Claims published its Top 50 U.S. patent grant recipient list for 2020, as well as its Global 250 list of top owners of active patent assets worldwide. The Top 50 list includes many of the usual suspects among top patent filing organizations, including IBM, which takes the top spot among all firms receiving U.S. patents for the 28th year in a row. Perhaps the most surprising finding from the study is that patent application filing activity increased slightly during 2020 despite the massive disruptions to daily life caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.