IBM has filed 161755 patent applications at USPTO so far. Out of these 127104 have been granted leading to an impressive grant rate of 85.81%. Such a grant index is remarkable for a company like IBM which has more than a hundred thousand patents in its kitty.
The table below provides key stats of IBM’s patent prosecution at the USPTO:
Interestingly, the application Abandonment/Rejection rate of IBM is only 14% which seems rather dwarf for the patent leader in the USA for the past 27 years. The #2 and #3 ranked patent filers, Samsung and Canon, have an application Abandonment/Rejection rate of 24.6% and 17.21% respectively.
Let’s see how IBM fares when compared with the average grant index of USPTO and Group Art Units of their interest?
The table below has the allowance rate of the top 10 GAUs of IBM’s interest. IBM’s allowance rate for the top ten GAU is higher than their average GAU allowance rate of 80.29%. Also, only one GAU in the top 10 GAUs has an allowance rate less than their grant index.
| GAU | Total Applications | Allowance Rate |
| 2113 | 1873 | 92.83% |
| 2825 | 1786 | 89.89% |
| 2114 | 1752 | 91.86% |
| 2183 | 1620 | 85.92% |
| 2191 | 1596 | 87.72% |
| 2818 | 1590 | 94.25% |
| 2192 | 1495 | 86.15% |
| 2193 | 1369 | 84.24% |
| 2851 | 1351 | 95.32% |
| 2122 | 1351 | 90.43% |