DISTRIBUTION OF PATENTS ISSUED TO CORPORATIONS 3 issued in the 17 years from January 1, 1939, to December 31, 1955 (excluding reissues and design and plant patents), is 586,391. A few patents, which were issued prior to January 1, 1939, 59 in number, were extended under the law relating to extensions of patents of World War II veterans (64 Stat. 316, 66 Stat. 321); a few of these are still unexpired, but they are ignored in the total given. Also, a few patents may have been disclaimed or dedicated by their owners and hence technically would not be in force; no allowance has been made for these. The number of patents issued during the preceding 17 years is taken as the number of unexpired patents or patents in force on December 31, 1955. This total number of patents is divided as shown in table 1. The figures in lines 1 to 4 of this table are estimates but they have been carried to the last digit and the percentages to two decimal places in order to make the totals balance. The manner in which these estimates were obtained is described in section 7, which also gives the same data divided on an annual basis. The patents indicated in line 4 of the table as issued to individuals include a small proportion (about 4.5 percent of the total) in which the applicant had assigned in whole or in part to some other individual. Line 5 of the table gives the number of patents issued to the United States Government resulting from inventions made by Government employees or from research paid for by the Government. The number given in this line does not include patents resulting from applications seized from the enemy during the war, nor a small number issued to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which held some patents and patent applications in connection with mortgages. Line 6 of the table gives the number of patents issued directly to the Alien Property Custodian, or his successor the Attorney General, resulting from seized enemy and other alien-owned applications. During the period of the program of vesting enemy property, over 41,000 patents and 4,700 patent applications were vested. Most of the seized patents have since expired but on December 31, 1955, the Office of Alien Property still held 10,647 unexpired patents. Except when issued directly to the Custodian or his successor, these patents would appear in the tabulations in this report as attributed to the original foreign grantees. If the number of the first patent Issued in 1939 (2,142,080) is subtracted from the number of the first patent issued in 1956 (2,728,913) the result would be slightly higher than the total given here. This is due to the fact that some patent numbers were not used: an application might be in process of issue with the patent number assigned and then be withdrawn for some reason and the patent not issued (or issued later with another number), in such event the assigned patent number could not be used for some other case. These withdrawals averaged 26 per year during the period involved here. 4 DISTRIBUTION OF PATENTS ISSUED TO CORPORATIONS 4. CORPORATIONS WITH THE LARGEST NUMBERS OF PATENTS, 1939-55 Limitations of time and personnel did not permit the counting of the number of patents issued to all corporations having any patents and an attempt was made to obtain only the names of all corporations with over 100 unexpired patents, and the number of patents issued to each of them. The number of corporations to each of which more than 100 patents (including to a substantial extent the patents issued to wholly owned subsidiaries and merged companies) were issued during the 17 years 1939 to 1955 was found to be 394.3 The names of these companies arranged in the order of the number of patents issued to them, and also indicating the subsidiaries and merged companies which are included, are given in the appendix, list I. The present section will only give some totals and distributions. Several tables are presented showing the distribution of the number of companies and of patents by ranges of patents. Table 2a is a short table showing the number of companies with more than 1,000 patents, the number of companies with 101 to 1,000 patents, and the total number of patents issued to the companies in these groups. The names of these companies were not, of course, known in advance. The manner in which they were obtained and how the work was done was as follows: A list (on cards) of companies was made up on which it was fairly certain that all or practically all companies with more than 100 patents would be included. This list was made by taking the name of each company which had 5 or more entries in the printed annual Index of Patentees in either of the years 1953, 1951, or 1955; by taking the name of each company on a discontinued card index of companies with their patents kept from the middle of 1938 to the middle of 1946 (and now otherwise uesless) which had more than 36 entries for this 8-year period; and by adding names not already included found on 4 lists of selected corporations which are described in footnote 5. The companies so listed were checked as indicated below for changes in names and mergers and additional names thus obtained. The result was a list of about 2,800 names. The number of patents issued in the years 1939 to 1955, inclusive, to each of these companies was counted from the cumulative index of patentees, which has been referred to in section 2. This index was started in 1931 and additions made from week to week as patents are issued. Each patent is indexed by the name of the inventor and also by the name of the patentee, if other than the inventor, on 3 by 5 slips which are arranged in alphabetical order in 15 filing cabinets with a total of over 800 drawers. It is located in the public search room of the Patent Office and is in constant use by the public. After the count was made, different names for the same company joined together, companies which had been merged during the period of the count also joined together, and patents issued to subsidiaries added, there resulted a total of 394 names to each of which more than 100 patents had been issued as assignee during the period 1939-53. It cannot, of course, be asserted categorically that the list is absolutely complete, but it is believed to be practically complete and that the omissions, if any, would occur among the companies with the lower number of patents. One or two of the names may not actually be corporations, but have nevertheless been included. Changes in names, mergers, and subsidiaries were ascertained as follows. The Assignment Branch of the Patent Office has kept a separate card index of changes in names and of mergers of companies, which have come to its attention through the recording of assignments of batches of patents and other papers. The name of each company on the first list which was made up was checked in this index. When it was found that there had been a change of name, the patents issued in each name were counted from the cumulative indes of patentees and the results added together under the latest name. When it was found that a company on the list had been merged with others, the patents issued to each company so merged, and to the new company, were counted from the cumulative index and the results added together under the latest name. This consolidation of such names in large part would account for transfers of patents from one company to another. There resulted from the count not only the names of the companies with over 100 patents, but also a large number of names of companies with fewer patents (there were nearly 400 names with from 50 to 100 patents), since the initial list was made considerably larger than might actually be necessary. The names of practically all of the companies with over 100 patents, of most of the companies with 50 to 100 patents, and of many of the companies with less than 50 patents, were looked up in Moody's Industrial Index, 1955, to determine the assets of the company and also to determine if it was a subsidiary of or had been acquired by some other company. If a company was found to be a wholly owned subsidiary of or acquired by another company, the patents issued to it were added to the patents issued to the parent company. Also, the names of many companies known to be subsidiaries of others had been included in DISTRIBUTION OF PATENTS ISSUED TO CORPORATIONS 5 Line 3 of table 2a represents the group of companies with 1 to 100 patents. These were not counted and hence the number of companies and patents is not known; however, the number of patents issued to this unknown number of companies can be estimated by subtraction from the estimate of the total number of patents issued to all corporations given in line 3 of table 1, and this estimate is given in line 3 of table 2a. No estimate of the number of companies with from 1 to 100 patents can be made from the present data in view of the enormous number of companies with a small number of patents, but it may be stated that the number is believed to be considerably over 20,000.* Table 2b includes in lines 1 to 10 an expansion of line 1 of table 2a, arranged by thousands of patents. Thus, line 7 of this table shows that there were 2 companies with from 4,001 to 5,000 patents each, and that the total number of patents issued to these 2 companies was 8,940, etc. Table 2c includes in lines 1 to 9 a division of line 2 of table 2a by hundreds of patents, and gives the number of companies, and the patents issued to them, in each hundred group. The distribution is also shown graphically in figures 1 and 2 which depict the number of companies and the number of patents issued to them for intervals of 100 patents. In figure 2, the percent of total patents is also indicated. Each of these figures is carried only to the group 1,501-1,600, leaving 22 companies off the figures; if these were added on the same scale the figures would need to be extended about 7 times the present width and most of the added intervals would be vacant. the original list. This association of patents issued to subsidiaries with the parent company was not of course complete, but practically all of the subsidiaries with substantial numbers of patents would have been included. The 394 companies with more than 100 patents bence include, to the extent Indicated, the patents issued to wholly owned subsidiaries and merged companies. In the study made in 1938, all the patents issued to corporations during a period of 74 years were counted and this count showed a total of 21,257 corporations receiving patents. the majority receiving an average of 1 or less patent per year and nearly half receiving only 1 patent during the 716-year period Involved. TNEC hearings, pt. 3, exhibit 191, p. 1129. Since only the patents issued during a 7-year period were counted, the total number of corporations receiving patents for the full 17-year period would be much greater than 21,257, this number being augmented by the corporations receiving patents during the other 9-years and none during the years counted. |