It might not be as cool as Apple $AAPL or as talked-about as Tesla $TSLA, but for nearly three decades, one company has been synonymous with American innovation: IBM $IBM.
That isn’t an opinion. From 1993 to 2021, no other company received more US patents than the Armonk, New York–based tech giant. But in 2022, Samsung surpassed it, winning 6,248 patents. IBM, which placed second, received 4,398, according a ranking compiled by patent data platform IFI.
Both of those figures pale in comparison with the numbers posted by IBM in previous years. In 2021, the company received 8,681 US patents, nearly twice as many as in 2022—almost 24 per day. But that, too, was a decline. In 2020, IBM won 9,130 patents; in 2019, it received 9,262. Overall, the descent looks dramatic.
A geopolitical picture of innovation
The number of patents also offers a snapshot of geopolitical innovation trends. Samsung’s success in 2022 shows the growing importance of Korean technology on a global scale. LG, which is also Korean, ranked sixth, and Samsung Display, a separate business from Samsung, finished 13th.