IEEE 2016 Patent Power Pipeline

A press release came in yesterday from the folks at Peregrine Semiconductor boasting (deservedly) about their ranking at 4th place in the Semiconductor category of the IEEE's 2016 Patent Power Pipeline report. An interactive bar chart and world map allows you to select from 17 categories (singularly or mixed). Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) came in at #1, RF Micro Devices (RFMD, now Qorvo) ranked #9 (BTW, there are some very talented former RFMD people I know who now work for Peregrine). Qorvo is in 11th place.

Rankings are based on records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as the the end of 2015. Note that the numbers presented on the chart represent a "Pipeline Power," calculated as follows:

Pipeline Power =    (number of 2015 patents) x (Pipeline Growth Index)

                              x (Adjusted Pipeline Impact) x (Pipeline Originality)

                              x (Pipeline Generality)

When all of the categories are selected, Google is the walk-away Pipeline Power leader with nearly twice the ranking of the runner-up, Apple. Ford comes in at #6 and Intel follows at #7. Microsoft, once the king of all such surveys, now sits in 11th place, just behind IBM.

Don't overlook the scrollbar on the right side of the chart; use it to scroll down the list (only 18 are shown at a time. I counted about 460 companies in the complete list.

Posted September 12, 2017