New Delhi: Technology giant IBM leads the patents race for the 16th year in a row, with 4,186 patents granted in 2008 in the US, followed by Samsung and Canon.

"IBM has become the first company to get more than 4,000 patents in a year, which is more than the combined number of patents of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google," IBM India Research Laboratory Director Guruduth Banavar told PTI.

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. The patent user can then licence the patent to others for use and get a royalty (fee) in return.

IBM, which earns about USD 1 billion annually from Intellectual Property, owned 3,125 patents in 2007. It has about 40,000 patents in total.

Asked about the number of patents it expects to get in 2009, Banavar said, "IBM spends about USD 6 billion on research and development. We expect to maintain this leadership and will do whatever it takes for that."

IBM also plans to increase the number of publication of future innovations and work on patent quality index.

"The company plans to increase the number of technical inventions published annually by 50 per cent to over 3,000 instead of seeking patent protection, which will allow these inventions to be available for free to others," he said.

"Though this means that we do not get the revenues from royalty but then others cannot also use it to make money. This is a strategic decision which will level the playing field and also open up innovation," he added.

Samsung received 3,515 patents followed by Canon (2,114), Microsoft (2,030) and Intel (1,776).

Toshiba ranked seventh with 1,609 patents followed by Fujitsu, Sony and HP.
Source : PTI