Last month, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) announced the release of its 36th annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. utility patents (see "Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents in 2018").  Patent Docs Readers may recall that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stopped releasing its annual list of top patent recipients in 2006 in order to "discourag[e] any perception that we believe more is better."

The IPO compiled its list by counting the number of utility patents granted during 2018 that listed an organization or a subsidiary as the owner on the printed patent.  The IPO notes that patents that were granted to two or more organizations jointly were attributed to the organization listed first on the patent.  The IPO also noted that 307,759  patents were issued in 2018, which was an decrease from the 318,829 patents that issued in 2017.  The top fifteen companies on the IPO Top 300 are listed below (click on table to expand):

Samsung Display Co., Ltd.; Sony Corp.; and Amazon Technologies, Inc. fell out of the Top 15 in 2018.  Samsung Display Co., Ltd. dropped from 11th to 17th; Sony Corp. dropped from 13th to 18th; and Amazon Technologies, Inc. dropped from 15th to 16th in 2018.  Jumping into the Top 15 were Dell Technologies; Ford Global Technologies, LLC; and United Technologies Corp.

As in past years, Patent Docs used the IPO's list of top patent holders to compile a list of the top "life sciences" companies and organizations receiving U.S. utility patents in 2018.  Each organization's IPO top 300 ranking for 2018 is indicated in the "2018 IPO Rank" column; the IPO top 300 ranking for 2017 (if available) is indicated in the "2017 IPO Rank" column; and the change in number of patents from 2017 is indicated in "% Change from 2017."  The Life Sciences Top 49 is listed below (click on table to expand):

Please note that some of the companies and organizations listed above may be involved in work outside the life sciences sector, and therefore, a portion of the patents granted to these companies and organizations may be directed to other than life sciences-related inventions.  In addition, our list includes medical device companies.