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IBM Loses Spot as Top U.S. Patent Recipient to Samsung
The U.S. in 2022 issued the smallest number of patents since 2018, a new study finds, while the Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics nosed past longtime leader IBM as the company awarded the most new patents. Working with data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the research firm IFI Claims Patent Services found that overall patent grants last year fell just over 1% to 327,321, following a 7% decline in issuance the previous year. IFI CEO Mike Baycroft says that the backlog of unprocessed applications at the patent office has increased from a historical average in the 400,000-500,000 range to more than 700,000 recently.