• • English
    • English
    • en-USEnglish
    • ja-JP日本語
    • zh-CN
• | Contact Us

• 24 Mar 2009

Thomson Reuters Analysis of 2008 World Patent Activity Finds U.S. Market Infused with Asian Innovations

Global Intellectual Property Analysis Finds Foreign Companies Dominate List of Top Ten U.S. Innovators While Chinese, European, Japanese and Korean Rankings Showcase Homegrown Technologies

Philadelphia, PA, USA - March 24, 2009 — The IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters released the results of its 2008 Global Innovation Study today, analyzing the leading innovators by key region over the last year. The study, which tracked the top ten innovators in China, Europe, Japan, Korea and the U.S. on the basis of total number of unique inventions issued in granted patents and published patent applications, found that 70 percent of top ten innovators in the U.S. were non-U.S. companies.  In contrast, home region innovators dominate the Asian and European top ten lists

Among the top innovators in the U.S. were — in order — Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea); International Business Machines Corp. (U.S.); Microsoft (U.S.); Toshiba (Japan); Canon (Japan); Fujitsu Ltd. (Japan); Sony Corp. (Japan); General Electric Co. (U.S.); Seiko Epson Corp. (Japan); and Hon Hai Precision Ind. Co. Ltd. (Taiwan).  Among the Asian firms who have developed a large innovation footprint in the U.S., Samsung, Toshiba, Canon, Sony Corp. and Seiko Epson also rank among the top ten innovators in their home regions.  The American companies among the U.S. top ten do not rank in the top ten of any other regions in this study.

In Europe, just one of the top ten innovators was from outside Europe: Samsung Electronics Co. LTD (Korea), which was the third most innovative company there last year. The remaining nine of the top ten are all European businesses. No European companies were in the top ten in the U.S. or Asia.

All the Asian regions studied show that Asian companies see the importance of their native markets in terms of innovation reinvestment. The top ten innovators in Japan, China and Korea are Japanese, Chinese and Korean organizations, respectively.

The following charts show the breakout of the top ten innovators in each region. The data was compiled using the Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) database.

DATA: TOP PATENTING COMPANIES

Table 1: United States Top Innovators 2008

Table 2: Europe Top Innovators 2008

(Europe comprises the European Patent Office, in addition to these specific countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.)

Table 3: Japan Top Innovators 2008

Table 4: China Top Innovators 2008

Table 5: Korea Top Innovators 2008

Next Steps

• Print
• Email

• The Knowledge Effect

  

  The right information in the right hands leads to amazing things

• Annual Report

  

  The 2010 Thomson Reuters Annual Report

• Corporate 

  

  Interbrand 2011 Best Global Brands Survey

• Tax & Accounting 

  

  Now on Checkpoint: New Interactive Decision Tools

• Financial 

  

  Enterprise Platform for Exchanges Launched

• Science 

  

  Project to Map the Pathways of Parkinson's

• Science 

  

  Innovation is the New Machine