Life Sciences Top 50 (plus 3)
[author: Donald Zuhn]
On Wednesday, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) released its 29th annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. patents. 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 2011 that listed an organization or a subsidiary as the owner on the printed patent. The IPO noted that if an assignment to an organization or its subsidiary was recorded after the patent was printed, the patent was not counted, and further, that patents which were granted to two or more organizations jointly were attributed to the organization listed first on the patent. The IPO also noted that 244,430 patents were issued in 2011, which was an increase from the 233,127 patents that issued in 2010. The top fifteen companies on the IPO Top 300 are listed below (click on table to expand):
Falling out of the Top 15 in 2011 was Intel Corp., which dropped to 17th.
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. patents in 2011. In the past six years, the number of life sciences companies and organizations making the list has gone from 51 in 2006 to 47 in 2007, 43 in 2008, 47 in 2009, 56 in 2010, and 53 last year. Each organization's IPO top 300 ranking for 2011 is indicated in the "2011 IPO Rank" column; the IPO top 300 ranking for 2010 (if available) is indicated in the "2010 IPO Rank" column; and the change in number of patents from 2010 is indicated in "+/- from 2010." The Life Sciences Top 50 (plus 3) is listed below (click on table to expand):
Life sciences companies and organizations that failed to make the IPO top 300 in 2011 after making it in 2010 included Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH (#260 on the IPO top 300 for 2010), Becton, Dickinson and Co. (263), Columbia University (272), Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (274), University of Pennsylvania (289), Unilever Patent Group (296), Ajinomoto Co., Inc. (297), Cornell Research Foundation Inc. (298), and University of Washington (301). Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. returned to the Top 300 after a one year hiatus.
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 is a little inclusive in that we included medical device companies.
For additional information regarding this topic, please see:
• "IPO Releases List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2010," June 30, 2011
• "IPO Releases List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2009," May 26, 2010
• "IPO Releases List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2008," May 14, 2009
• "IPO Releases List of Top 300 Patent Holders," May 22, 2008
• "IPO Posts List of Top 300 Patent Holders," April 20, 2007
