A new report shows that U.S. patent activity continued its multi-year decline in 2025, with Apple dropping to seventh place after receiving 2,722 grants, a 11% decrease from 2024. Here are the details.
Parent filings and grants decline for the sixth consecutive year
Patent data and analytics company IFI CLAIMS has published its yearly report on U.S. patent activity, and concluded that “for the third year running, the principal story of corporate innovation has been the dash to invest in artificial intelligence”.
According to the report, the U.S. saw 393,344 patent applications in 2025, a 8.6% decline from 2024, while patent grants slipped 0.2% to 323,272.
The U.S., Japan, and China were the top countries by the number of U.S.-granted patents, while Taiwan saw the highest growth rate, with more than 12%.
As for Apple, the company received a total of 2,722 patent grants in 2025, a 11.6% decrease compared to its 3,082 grants in 2024. Samsung Electronics led the pack with 7,054 patent grants for the year, up 10.6% year-over-year, followed by TSMC, Qualcomm, Huawei, and Samsung Display. Trailing behind Apple were Canon, Toyota, Dell, and LG Electronics, rounding out the top 10.
Interestingly, IBM landed in 11th place, marking the first time in more than three decades that it has fallen outside the top 10. The company previously held the top spot for an impressive 29 consecutive years before being overtaken by Samsung in 2022.
Here’s IFI CLAIMS on IBM’s numbers:
But those numbers don’t necessarily tell the story of a company that is faltering on invention. Rather, IBM has adopted an intentional patent strategy that turns away from the pursuit of racking up the greatest number of grants and focuses instead on just a few key areas such as cloud computing and AI.
Also interestingly, IFI CLAIMS noted that despite AI’s chip hunger, traditional chip patents (H01L) declined by 20% year-over-year. At the same time, H10D, a category for inorganic semiconductor devices (transistors, diodes, integrated devices), appeared on the top 20 codes lists for both patent grants and applications.
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