The USPTO announced 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. Note that tech companies continue to outpace any of the bio-pharma companies in patent filings given the number of big companies that have shrinking pipelines. I’ll be looking to see who first, if it ever happens, breaks into the top ten.

Top 10 Private Sector Patent Recipients for 2004
Preliminary Rank in 2004  Preliminary Number of 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

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