LinkedIn has a total of 1476 patents globally, out of which 939 have been granted. Of these 1476 patents, more than 16% patents are active. United States of America is where LinkedIn has filed the maximum number of patents, followed by China and India and it also seems reasonable as the biggest market for LinkedIn is USA & India. Parallelly, USA seems to be the main focused R&D center and is also the origin country of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a subsidiary of Microsoft and the company was founded in 2003 by Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Konstantin Guericke, and Reid Hoffman. LinkedIn doing business as an online service provider. The company offers a range of services in social media, social recruiting, professional networking, etc. As of December 2021, LinkedIn has a market cap of $22.6 Billion.
Do read about some of the most popular patents of LinkedIn which have been covered by us in this article and also you can find LinkedIn patents information, the worldwide patent filing activity and its patent filing trend over the years, and many other stats over the LinkedIn patent portfolio.
How many patents does LinkedIn have?
LinkedIn has a total of 1476 patents globally. These patents belong to 1058 unique patent families. Out of 1476 patents, 243 patents are active.
How many LinkedIn patents are Alive/Dead?
Worldwide Patents
Patent Families
How Many Patents did LinkedIn File Every Year?
Are you wondering why there is a drop in patent filing for the last two years? It is because a patent application can take up to 18 months to get published. Certainly, it doesn’t suggest a decrease in the patent filing.
| Year of Patents Filing or Grant | LinkedIn Applications Filed | LinkedIn Patents Granted |
| 2011 | – | 65 |
| 2012 | 14 | 6 |
| 2013 | 42 | 3 |
| 2014 | 32 | 6 |
| 2015 | 75 | 8 |
| 2016 | 158 | 4 |
| 2017 | 116 | 14 |
| 2018 | 8 | 33 |
| 2019 | 1 | 52 |
| 2020 | 1 | 11 |
| 2021 | – | 4 |
How Many Patents did LinkedIn File in Different Countries?
Countries in which LinkedIn Filed Patents
| Country | Patents |
| United States Of America | 1189 |
| China | 45 |
| India | 44 |
| Japan | 35 |
| United Kingdom | 24 |
| Europe | 22 |
| Canada | 17 |
| Taiwan | 14 |
| Korea (South) | 12 |
| Australia | 7 |
| Germany | 2 |
| Singapore | 2 |
| Brazil | 1 |
| France | 1 |
Where are Research Centers of LinkedIn Patents Located?
10 Best LinkedIn Patents
US7818165B2 is the most popular patent in the LinkedIn portfolio. It has received 250 citations so far from companies like Apple, Dub Software Group and Newvaluexchange Ltd.
Below is the list of 10 most cited patents of LinkedIn:
| Publication Number | Citation Count |
| US7818165B2 | 250 |
| US7747774B2 | 222 |
| US7792328B2 | 218 |
| US7003551B2 | 206 |
| US7855101B2 | 205 |
| US7814142B2 | 187 |
| US20140149519A1 | 187 |
| US7159150B2 | 183 |
| US7809587B2 | 174 |
| US7808897B1 | 145 |
Which Companies are using LinkedIn Patents to Advance their Research?
If patents or patents from a particular technology area of a company receive a lot of citations, it implies that the technology is being followed and incrementally innovated by the citing companies. It also indicates that citing companies are working on similar and closely related technologies.
The top citing companies in the LinkedIn patent portfolio are IBM, Microsoft and SAP.
List of the top forward citing Companies –
| Company | Number of Patents |
| IBM | 334 |
| Microsoft | 208 |
| Sap Se | 50 |
| Oracle | 48 |
| Samsung | 46 |
| Hewlett-Packard | 40 |
| 36 | |
| Salesforcecom | 33 |
| 29 | |
| Apple | 28 |
Count of 102 and 103 Type Rejections based on LinkedIn Patents
Top LinkedIn Patents used in Rejecting Most Patent Applications
| Patent Number | Count of Rejected Applications |
| US7725525B2 | 38 |
| US7003551B2 | 26 |
| US7822860B2 | 22 |
| US20050228808A1 | 19 |
| US20060069717A1 | 19 |
| US7792328B2 | 18 |
| US7814142B2 | 17 |
| US7113988B2 | 16 |
| US7814470B2 | 15 |
| US7844917B2 | 15 |
| US7792784B2 | 14 |
| US7817584B2 | 14 |
| US7761429B2 | 14 |
| US7844354B2 | 13 |
| US7809587B2 | 13 |
What Percentage of LinkedIn US Patent Applications were Granted?
LinkedIn (Excluding its subsidiaries) has filed 2490 patent applications at USPTO so far (Excluding Design and PCT applications). Out of these 1785 have been granted leading to a grant rate of 72.65%.
Below are the key stats of LinkedIn patent prosecution at the USPTO.
Which Law Firms Filed Most US Patents for LinkedIn?
| Law Firm | Total Applications | Success Rate |
| Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner | 1541 | 72.09% |
| Ndwe Llp | 285 | 57.09% |
| Park Vaughan Fleming & Dowler | 67 | 0.00% |
| International Business Machines Corp | 130 | 100.00% |
| Inactive Rsw Iplaw | 46 | 100.00% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc | 23 | 100.00% |
| 12 | 0.00% | |
| Inactive Tuc Iplaw | 6 | 100.00% |
| Xtera Communications Inc | 5 | 100.00% |
| Inactive Cam Iplaw | 4 | 100.00% |
In a variety of ways, LinkedIn has changed the traditional recruiting and job-search sector. Initially, LinkedIn just took low-tech operations and placed them online (e.g., printing and distributing resumes, small-scale headhunting, etc.), but this quickly expanded to include more than just recruiting and early versions of the platform. LinkedIn immediately identified the value of network effects in its company after creating one of the earliest online professional networks.
More users on LinkedIn, for example, make the network a more valuable database for recruiting organizations, increasing the likelihood that those companies will locate qualified applicants in a timely manner. As more users join, LinkedIn can mine and filter user data in real-time to help to recruit organizations proactively uncover interesting individuals. Furthermore, the value marketers and advertisers gain from LinkedIn is strongly linked to the number of users on the network as well as the amount of information those users make available (e.g., age, gender, geographic location, work experience, etc.). These network effects have given LinkedIn a competitive moat, allowing it to grow on its own success.
The “economic graph,” as CEO Jeff Weiner describes it, is the next step in LinkedIn’s digital transformation of traditional recruiting and job search. The economic graph would be a computerized representation of every economic opportunity in the globe, as well as full profiles and data on all enterprises, universities, and the world’s 3 billion professional workers. As a step in this direction, LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com, an online education provider.
EXCLUSIVE INSIGHTS COMING SOON!
What are LinkedIn’s key innovation segments?
What Technologies are Covered by LinkedIn?
The chart below distributes patents filed by LinkedIn in different countries on the basis of the technology protected in patents. It also represents the markets where LinkedIn thinks it’s important to protect particular technology inventions.
R&D Focus: How LinkedIn search focus changed over the years?
EXCLUSIVE INSIGHTS COMING SOON!
Interested in knowing about the areas of innovation that are being protected by LinkedIn?