Patents

SOUTH KOREA

Samsung Electronics Filed Fifth Largest Applications

Samsung Electronics become the company filing the fifth largest applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) according to the 2005 data released by the USPTO.

According to the USPTO preliminary data, Samsung Electronics filed its record-high 1641 patent applications with the USPTO last year, following IBM, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Matsushita. Samsung submitted more patent applications than Intel, Hitachi, and Toshiba.

The number of Samsung Electronics' patent applications to the USPTO has been increasing from 1,329 cases (11th) in 2002, 1,313 cases (9th) in 2003, 1,604 (6th) in 2004, and 1,641 cases (5th) in 2005.

Yoon-Woo Lee, CTO of the company announced last November, "Samsung plans the 3rd largest patent registrations in the world by the year 2007". The number of patent specialists of the company is also planned to expand to 450 persons in 2010. The portion of R&D manpower will be raised to 32% by 2010.