"Biotech/Pharma" Top 50 (+1)
By Donald Zuhn --
On Monday, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) released its annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. patents in 2006. The IPO's release of the list comes three months after the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) announced that it would no longer release an annual list of top patent recipients in order to "discourag[e] any perception that we believe more is better." The IPO stated that while it did not want "to encourage organizations to obtain more patents merely for the sake of obtaining more patents," it would continue to publish its annual list of top recipients because the list was "currently one of the few objective measures of the patent system." The IPO compiled its list by counting the number of utility patents granted during 2006 on which an organization or its subsidiary was listed as the owner on the face of the patent. The IPO noted that 173,771 patents were issued in 2006.
From the IPO's list of the top 300 patent holders, Patent Docs compiled a list of the Top 51 "biotech and pharma" companies and organizations receiving U.S. patents in 2006. Each organization's IPO top 300 ranking is indicated in parentheses. Please note that some of the companies and organizations listed below may be involved in non-biotech or non-pharma work, and therefore, that a portion of the patents granted to these companies may be directed to other than biotech and pharma-related inventions. In addition, our list is a little inclusive in that we included medical device companies.
1 (38) -- E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. -- 531 patents
2 (40) -- Johnson & Johnson -- 516
3 (41) -- Boston Scientific Corp. -- 514
4 (49) -- Agilent Technologies, Inc. -- 469
5 (54) -- Regents of the University of California -- 410
6 (62) -- Procter & Gamble Co. -- 359
7 (65) -- Pfizer Inc. -- 345
8 (80) -- Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan -- 255
9 (89) -- Medtronic Inc. -- 233
10 (99) -- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. -- 201
11 (107) -- Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH -- 178
12 (115) -- GlaxoSmithKline -- 163
13 (126) -- Bayer AG -- 148
14 (128) -- Genentech, Inc. -- 146
15 (132) -- Rohm and Haas Co. -- 142
16 (134) -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- 139
17 (145) -- Merck & Co., Inc. -- 130
18 (151) -- Council of Scientific and Industrial Research -- 123
19 (152) -- U.S.A., Health & Human Services -- 122
20 (153) -- Battelle Memorial Institute -- 121
21 (158) -- Schering Corp. -- 117
22 (160) -- Wyeth -- 116
23 (161) -- California Institute of Technology Corp. -- 115
24 (169) -- AstraZeneca AB -- 109
25 (175) -- University of Texas -- 107
26 (187) -- Amgen Inc. -- 102
26 (189) -- Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. -- 102
28 (190) -- Novartis AG -- 101
28 (192) -- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation -- 101
30 (194) -- Merck Patent GmbH -- 100
31 (195) -- Pacesetter, Inc. -- 99
32 (196) -- Stanford University -- 98
33 (201) -- Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique -- 92
34 (203) -- Johns Hopkins University -- 91
35 (207) -- Degussa AG -- 90
36 (211) -- Dow Chemical Co. -- 89
37 (225) -- Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. -- 81
38 (238) -- Applera Corp. -- 75
39 (244) -- Abbott Laboratories -- 72
40 (250) -- University of Michigan -- 69
41 (251) -- Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, Inc. -- 68
42 (264) -- Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung E.V. -- 65
43 (267) -- Becton, Dickinson and Co. -- 64
43 (271) -- Monsanto Technology, LLC -- 64
43 (272) -- Shimadzu Corp. -- 64
46 (275) -- Baxter International Inc. -- 63
47 (281) -- Japan Science and Technology Agency -- 62
48 (286) -- Cornell Research Foundation Inc. -- 61
48 (291) -- Stine Seed Farm, Inc. -- 61
50 (292) -- Kaneka Corp. -- 60
50 (294) -- University of Florida Research Foundation, Inc. -- 60
Readers: If you discover any omissions or inaccuracies, we ask that you please notify us so that we can update and/or correct the list.
I see many mistakes.
Posted by: Jonathon | April 20, 2007 at 02:55 PM
Thanks, Jon, but could you be more specific?
Posted by: Don | April 20, 2007 at 03:00 PM
We should note that IPO's list does not account for "ties" and that companies having the same number of issued patents are listed and given a rank based on alphabetical order (e.g., Becton Dickenson & Co. (267), Monsanto Technology, LLC (271), and Shimadzu Corp. (272), each having 64 patents).
Posted by: Chris | April 20, 2007 at 03:38 PM