by , 7:00 AM EDT, April 12th, 2001
Observer Ben Milford informed us that Technology Review has posted a list of the top 150 companies producing patents over the last five years. During much of the 1990's, Apple ranked in the top ten each year in patents awarded by the U.S. Government. While Apple's ranking dropped to 19th in the year 2000, their 90+ patents is still an impressive number.
According to the Technology Review article, and popular wisdom, IBM has been the leader in patents for the last five years, with the year 2000 seeing Big Blue awarded 2,927 patents. Other notable companies in the top twenty include HP, Compaq, Dell, Sun, Microsoft, Xerox, and Cisco.
You can find a complete listing of the top patent winners at the Technology Review Web site.
Rather than letting Apple researches pursue each and every whim, Jobs has the company tightly focused and pointed in a very specific direction. While the number of patents awarded Apple has decreased, the number of high quality, and profitable, products shipping from the company is at an all time high.