Every year, various lists are published of the top patent filers or owners from the past year. For example, for US patent grants Harrity Analytics have recently published their top 300 list: 2025 Patent 300 List | Top Patent Owners List | Top Companies In Patents and IFI Claims Patent Services their top 50 list: 2024 Top 50 U.S. Patent Assignees | IFI CLAIMS.
Whilst there are some discrepancies in the numbers between these lists (likely due to how patents are aggregated under the same assignee), generally it is the same names appearing roughly in the same places in the lists. This includes Samsung Electronics at number 1, having obtained a staggering 9304 US patent grants in 2024 according to Harrity.
Famously, IBM topped the list of US patent grants from 1993 - 2022 but has since been overtaken by Samsung Electronics, who have been at the top each year since then. IBM now sit in 7th obtaining a 'mere' 2774 US patent grants in the Harrity 2024 list. As IBM explained themselves, this change was due to a focus on different technologies and different R&D models in particular open innovation where patents may not be as useful. Nevertheless, despite IBM reducing their patent filings, patents still remain an important part of their IP strategy and they are still filing and obtaining grant of a large number in the US.
So why do companies obtain so many patents and what can smaller companies, even start-ups learn from this?
Building a patent portfolio: strength in numbers
Having a patent for a new piece of technology is an important first step to protecting against competitors using that technology without authorisation. However, having multiple patents, ie. a patent portfolio, provides a strength in protection that is typically greater than the sum of its parts.
One reason for this is that to avoid infringement of a patent, a competitor has to omit a single feature of each claim from their product. Assuming, as in most cases, a patent has a single independent claim, infringement of the whole patent can be avoided by the competitor's product not having just one of the features in that independent claim.
If a patentee has a second patent in the same jurisdiction covering the same technology, assuming the patent claims a sufficiently different set of features, the competitor now has to omit two features from their product. And so forth for each additional patent.
Hence, it can be seen how having a portfolio of patents increases the difficulty by which a competitor can avoid infringement.
Similarly, attacking the validity of an entire patent portfolio becomes more difficult and less certain for each additional patent in the portfolio.
Manage budget and allocate resources accordingly
Of course, filing and prosecuting patents has costs associated with it. Building a patent portfolio requires careful consideration of where and what to spend money on. As shown by IBM's change of strategy even large companies have budgets and cannot spend infinitely on patent protection.
Choosing which jurisdictions to build your patent portfolio in is an important consideration. For example, Samsung Electronics only files in select countries. Samsung also does not file the same number of patents in other countries as it does in the US - as shown here: Samsung: Top Patent Holder 2019-2022 | IP Pilot.
These choices are naturally more significant for smaller companies that do not have the resources of an IBM or Samsung. It is especially important for smaller companies when building their patent portfolio to balance geographical spread versus geographical depth. In other words, when budget is limited, patent applicants should consider the trade-offs between filing fewer patents in more countries versus filing more patents in fewer countries.
Understand what is valuable to protect
A patent provides a negative right that enables the patent owner to stop a competitor from making or selling a product within the scope of the claims.
Hence, just having a patent granted for the sake of numbers is not the basis for a sound commercial strategy. The patents need to be directed to what is unique and commercially valuable about a product - which also needs to tie into the company's business strategy.
For example, in a classic 'razor and blade' strategy where most of the commercial revenue is in the blade; patent claims directed to the blade may be of more value than claims directed to the razor alone where the patentee wants to stop competitors just making blades that can be used on their razor. On the other hand, in some cases stopping a competitor making or selling a razor may interrupt their entire business model even though the direct commercial revenue of the razor is relatively low.
The decision on what claim scope to pursue may also depend on the nature and behaviour of your competitors (ie. some competitors may make only blades, others may make razors and blades). In addition, it is necessary to consider in which jurisdictions the blade is more valuable to protect versus the razor, and vice versa.
Strategic considerations
Lists of top patent owners are naturally dominated by very large companies with massive R&D and IP budgets. However, the strategies they apply to patent portfolio building can, and should, be used at smaller scales with lower volumes.
While having multiple patents of differing scope provides increased strength of protection for a technology, careful choices need to be made as to what is included in a patent portfolio in order to manage costs and ensure commercially valuable features of the technology are protected.
How we can help
Reach out to Andrew or any of the team to receive expert advice to guide your IP strategy. We have large teams and specialists in every area of technology to assist.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
