Patents are important to companies because this helps protect them from intellectual property thieves who might otherwise try to steal their ideas and/or designs and pass it off as their own. It can also serve as an alternate revenue stream, like how Microsoft holds various patents pertaining to Android that OEMs have to pay them if they want to keep making Android devices.
That being said, when it comes to smartphone patents, who do you think has the highest number of patents? Nokia? Apple? Samsung? Well if you thought Nokia you’d be wrong. It’s true that they do own a massive portfolio of patents, but in reality it seems that it is Samsung who has the largest number of patents related to smartphones.
We’re not talking about patents in general, but smartphone related patents. According to a report from the Korea Economic Daily, it seems that Samsung has the largest amount of smartphone patents, which totals up to around 2,179. This is significantly more than Apple who owns 647, while LG comes in at second place with 1,678.
In third place is Qualcomm with 1,071, and interesting enough Panasonic and Sharp come in at fourth and fifth with 976 and 963 patents respectively. So what do you guys make of these numbers? Did any of them surprise you?