Ranked 39th among companies in the US

Apple is widely recognized as one of the most innovative companies in technology, and also the most valuable, but when it comes to patents it is ranked 39th among companies with inventions patented in the US in 2011, AppleInsider reports. The ranking is a significant improvement for the Mac maker over last year, when it was awarded 563 patents and was rated number 46. IBM and Samsung were the two top-rated companies.

IBM has been the top-rated inventor company for a number of years, and was awarded 6,180 patents in 2011. Second-place Samsung won 4,894 patents, with Canon, Panasonic and Toshiba rounding out the top five with an average of over 2,500 patents each. Other technology companies ranked ahead of Apple in terms of patents include Microsoft (sixth place with 2,311 patents), Hewlett-Packard (14th, 1,308), Intel (16th, 1,244) and AT&T (35th, 721 patents).

Apple's increase of 20 percent in the number of patents in 2011 is nothing compared to the gain in 2010, when it almost doubled the number of patents awarded from its 2009 total of 289 (the 2009 total was itself nearly a doubling of its 2008 record 186 patents). IBM and Samsung held the top two spots in 2010, but Microsoft was in third place that year.

Apple ranked higher in patents that some other competitors, including Research in Motion (40th place), LG Display (41st place) and Nokia (47th place). Among the most interesting patents AppleInsider picked out for Apple in 2011 were patents for personalization of mobile devices based on face recognition, Kinect-like 3D input for controlling Macs, a method for improving OLED displays, patents regarding the use hydrogen fuel cells as potential future battery technology, leveraging the accelerometer and gyro for stabilizing iPhone video recording (already in use on the iPhone 4S), augmented reality for iPhone maps and patents for future carbon fiber devices, among others. [via AppleInsider]

by MacNN Staff