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Indeed, leaderboard per jurisdiction would be super interesting. IBM with 287000 patents would likely be in the top ones.

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We have a leaderboard per country. IBM is indeed No.1 for the US: https://goodip.io/iq/top/offices/us

The all-time leaderboards for each industry and each technology are here: https://goodip.io/iq/top/industries https://goodip.io/iq/top/technologies

Impressive to see Union Carbide on the list, given that they haven't existed for 30 years.

I did an internship at IBM (~15 years ago) and they said that not only does IBM have the most patents, it tries to have the most patents awarded every year. You could just send half arsed ideas to a team of lawyers and they would write it up into a proper patent.

Getting patents in your name was a big part of moving up the internal engineering ladder.

But what do they do with them all? Seemingly not much...

It's a defensive strategy, so others cannot enforce vague patents against them.

Master Inventor is a title that still carries a lot of esteem in IBM, albeit not the financial perks any more.

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