Google patent grants increase by 170 percent in 2012
Internet search provider Google was granted 1151 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) last year, a 170 percent increase on 2011.
Data published by IFI Claims Patent Services on Thursday reveals that Google, which bought US phone company Motorola Mobility (MMI) in May, now ranks 21st in the list of the top 50 US patent assignees, a jump of 44 places since last year and one that puts the company ahead of its rival Apple.
Google was recently the subject of an anti-trust investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and last week, signed a decree issued by the FTC limiting when it can seek injunctions to block access to standards-essential technology patents. On Monday, the company withdrew two major patent infringement claims against Microsoft.
US company International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) topped IFI’s rankings for the twentieth year running, followed by Korean company Samsung and Japanese manufacturer Canon. Nearly 20 percent of all utility patents granted in 2012 were for computing, calculating and counting products, and the total number of patents granted by the USPTO last year was 253,155, a 13 percent increase on 2011.
Rodney Sweetland, a patent litigation partner at Duane Morris LLP in Washington D.C., said the increase in patent filings from companies such as Google and Apple is driven by “the need to obtain ‘ammunition’ for patent litigation in the worldwide smartphone wars”.
“This is the functional equivalent to the US and UK increasing armaments production during World War II. There is a global battle for supremacy, principally between the Android operating system and Apple. (Nokia and RIM, with their operating systems, are peripheral combatants). Patent litigation is the battlefield and patents are the weapons giving these warring parties the ability to increase market share,” he said.
IFI's data also shows that companies are continuing to invest huge amounts of both time and money in patent portfolios - money that Brian Love, assistant professor of law Santa Clara University, believes could be better spent on "more socially beneficial uses" such as research and development.
"In addition to the cost of prosecuting patents of their own, 'smartphone wars' adversaries Google and Apple have spent billions of dollars in recent years purchasing others' patents and hundreds of millions in litigation costs and attorneys fees. The net result is that both companies have spent far more in the last two years on patents than they have on research and design," he says.
To view IFI's report in full, click here.
