USPTO Releases Top 10 Patent Filers for 2004: The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today the 2004 top 10 private sector patent recipients. Listed below are the 10 corporations receiving the most patents for inventions in 2004, along with their 2003 ranking. For the twelfth consecutive year, IBM received more patents than any other private sector organization.


Top 10 Private Sector Patent Recipients for the 2004 Calendar Year

Preliminary Rank in 2004 / Preliminary # Patents in 2004 / Organization / (Final Rank in 2003) (Final Number of Patents in 2003)
1 3,248 International Business Machines Corporation (1) (3,415)
2 1,934 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. ** (4) (1,774 ) **
3 1,805 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (2) (1,992)
4 1,775 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. *** (5) (1,759) ***
5 1,760 Micron Technology, Inc. (6) (1,707)
6 1,604 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (9) (1,313)
7 1,601 Intel Corporation (7) (1,592)
8 1,514 Hitachi, Ltd (3) (1,893)
9 1,310 Toshiba Corporation (13) (1,184)
10 1,305 Sony Corporation (10) (1,311)