January 10, 2001
#01-02

Press Release, 01-02

USPTO Releases Annual List of 10 Organizations Receiving Most Patents

IBM Repeats at Top of List, While Four U.S. Corporations Make the List This Year

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced the top 10 private sector patent recipients for the 2000 calendar year. Listed below are the 10 corporations receiving the most patents for inventions in 2000, along with their ranking last year. For the eighth straight year, IBM received more utility patents than any other private sector organization.

For the year, the top 10 patenting organizations consist of four U.S. corporations, five Japanese corporations, and one corporation from the Republic of Korea. One U.S. corporation has been added and one Japanese corporation has been dropped from the list. The U.S. government received 920 utility patents for the year.

Preliminary Rank in 2000*	Preliminary # Patents in 2000*	Organization*	(Final Rank) (in 1999)	(Final Number of) (Patents in 1999)
1	2,886	International Business Machines Corporation	(1)	(2,756)
2	2,020	NEC Corporation	(2)	(1,842)
3	1,890	Canon Kabushiki Kaisha	(3)	(1,795)
4	1,441	Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.	(4)	(1,545)
5	1,411	Lucent Technologies Inc.	(9)	(1,152)
6	1,385	Sony Corporation	(5)	(1,410)
7	1,304	Micron Technology, Inc.	(14)	(933)
8	1,232	Toshiba Corporation	(6)	(1,200)
9	1,196	Motorola Inc.	(7)	(1,192)
10	1,147	Fujitsu Limited	(7)	(1,192)
	920	U.S. GOVERNMENT		(983)

* The listed patent counts are preliminary counts which are subject to correction. The final listing of 2000 patent counts for the top patenting organizations should be available by early April.

Please Note:
Patent information presented reflects patent ownership at patent grant and does not include ownership changes that occur after the patent grant. Where more than one assignee (owner) exists, patents are attributed to the first-named assignee.