Canon filed a total of 2,329 US patents in 2024, ranking the company ninth in the number of patents registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), meaning that the company was placed in the top 10 for 41 consecutive years, according to data from US-based patent research firm IFI CLAIMS Patent Services.
Other companies that made the top 10 were LG Electronics (in sixth place with 2,768 patents), Apple (fourth place with 3,082 patents), and Samsung Electronics (who took the top place with 6,377 filings).
As well as taking ninth spot, the figures also put Canon as the number-one Japanese company to obtain US patents, a record it's held for the past 20 years. The company is known for emphasizing the importance of obtaining patents not only in its native Japan but also internationally, and clearly sees the US, with its concentration of high-tech companies and large market scale, as a particularly important region in which to establish patents.
Canon says that it devotes significant resources to the acquisition of intellectual property rights that anticipate future developments in such fields as AI, and that by leveraging its intellectual property portfolio, it is working to boost the expansion of its business by not only securing a competitive advantage and the freedom to conduct business in the future, but to also obtaining licensing revenues to compensate the development costs of its technologies.
Of course, not all patents will see the light of day in a finalized products, but it's nevertheless interesting to see how much investment Canon makes in patenting its innovations. And it's a sobering thought that the technologies underlying the best Canon cameras, best Canon RF lenses, and best Canon printers had their origins in a pile of patents dreamt up by the corporation's teams of engineers and researchers…
