2014年获得技术专利最多的8大公司

    专利是科技行业的命脉。从去年的统计数字来看，科技行业依旧充满了活力。

    去年，美国专利商标局批准了超过30万项实用专利，创下历史新高。所谓实用专利即与发明创造有关的专利，不包括设计专利。这些专利使公司的发明获得最长二十年的保护期限，进而让它们收获大规模研发投入带来的丰硕成果。此外，这些专利还有另外一个好处：允许公司积累充足的知识产权储备，为未来的法律诉讼提供有力支持。

    美国商业专利数据库公司市场营销副总裁兼高级专利分析师拉里•卡迪表示：“恃强凌弱的人肯定不会选择大个子。他们会去欺负弱小的人。”该公司的业务之一就是维护专利数据库。

    在今年的排行榜中，有哪些公司遥遥领先？他们正在竭力保护哪些创意？

    1月，商业专利数据库发布了2014年50家专利大户排名。《财富》杂志携手该公司对这份排名进行了研究，其中大部分公司来自计算、硬件与软件制造和移动技术领域。简而言之：技术专利普遍很专业。有时候，甚至专业到令人麻木。卡迪表示：“许多专利都非常普通。专利文件内容也很无聊。有时候你会发现类似苹果手表这样的专利，但这简直就是凤毛麟角。”（苹果公司在商业专利数据库的2014年排行榜中名列第11位。）

    但我们还是进行了深入研究。《财富》调查了去年专利大户获得的专利，以确认这些公司的最新研发成果。在2014年“研发投入最多的十大公司排行榜”基础上，下面这份清单将更加详细地介绍各大公司创新投入的方向和使用方式。

    我们的调查结果如下：

    Patents are the lifeblood of the tech industry—and if last year’s numbers are any indication, that sector is performing with vigor.

    More than 300,000 utility patents—those are the ones for inventions, rather than designs—were issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office last year, a record high. Such patents allow companies to put their inventions on lockdown for up to two decades, reaping rewards for significant R&D investments. And there’s another incentive: allowing businesses to stock up their intellectual property warchests and fortify their legal defenses.

    “If you’re a bully you’re not going to pick on the big kids,” says Larry Cady, vice president of marketing and senior patent analyst at IFI Claims Patent Services, a firm that maintains a database of patents. “You’re going to pick on the pipsqueaks.”

    So which companies are the head honchos? And what ideas are they bent on securing?

    Fortune partnered with IFI Claims, which last monthranked the top 50 patent assignees of 2014, in order to examine the major players’ patents—most of which involve computing, hardware and software manufacturing, and mobile technology. A word to the wise: technology patents can be, well, technical. Sometimes, mind-numbingly so. “A lot of patents tend to be very regular,” Cady says. “They’re not fun to read. Once in a while you see something like an Apple Watch, but that’s like finding a needle in a hay stack.” (Apple ranked 11 on IFI Claims’ 2014 list.)

    Well, we dug in anyway. Fortune peeked inside the patent caches of last year’s top earners to spot companies’ latest additions. What follows is a list expanding on our 2014 list of the top 10 R&D-spending companies, revealing with finer granularity where and how companies spend their innovation bucks.

    Here’s what we found.