Top Holders of Blockchain Patents | Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP

As we noted in our post last year on the state of blockchain patent litigation, thousands of blockchain-related patent applications are being filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office. To continue our analysis of the evolving landscape, we now look at who is filing these patent applications. A search for the top US patent applicants from the start of 2021 to present filing applications for either “blockchain” or “distributed ledger” technology provided an interesting look at the companies that aggressively sought patent protection on blockchain technologies.

The top filing companies of the past year operate in a variety of industries and geographies, particularly the financial and technology sectors. Lately, IBM has taken the lead as the only entity to file the most blockchain-related patent applications in the past year.

However, this lead is somewhat misleading because of the top individual entities filing in this period, Advanced New Technologies and Alipay are both linked to China’s Ant Group Co., Ltd., itself an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Limited. Counting these together establishes the Alibaba group as by far the most active file.

When looking instead at the top holders of issued patents, four companies in the top 10 also link back to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. In fact, the top three companies, all affiliated with Alibaba, hold more patents than the second largest owner, IBM, by a significant margin. In issued patents, IBM comes in fourth place, with several other US financial and technology companies rounding out the top 10.

We can determine from this data that some in the financial and technology sectors are investing large amounts of money to obtain patents for blockchain-related technologies. Of these, the Alibaba Group and its related entities appear to be the most prolific in the space. This comes with the continued growth of investment in blockchain technology to tackle a variety of different problems. While US-based companies have made large investments in applying for patents, more applications have come from international entities, with most coming from Chinese companies. The significant investment in US blockchain patents by Alibaba and other Chinese companies may indicate an intention to move more aggressively into blockchain businesses in the US, as US patents can only be enforced in the US.

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