How much do companies really make from their patents?
This question always bugged me, particularly for larger corporations like IBM – so I did some quick analysis and this is what I came up with.
According to the IBM website, the company spends about $5 billion per year on research and development. At present, they have about 40,000 active patents worldwide, with 26,000 patents within the US. Also, different reports have IBM earning between $1 billion to $1.8 billion per year for its intellectual property. If that is the case, then based on 40,000 patents, IBM’s average revenues per patent range from $25,000 to $45,000 per year. While the company’s IBM IP revenues are large in aggregate, surprising the revenue per patent is quite modest. I honestly thought it would be much more.
sunnyahn
December 25, 2006 @ 10:56 pm
Here is a wired article stating that IBM generated about $1.6B from Intellectual property revenues in 2000.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,43186,00.html
joe
May 21, 2007 @ 9:53 am
It is quite likely that you are right; most of the revenue probably comes from a small number of patents in the portfolio, while the remaining bulk of the portfolio does support or makes very little at present.