Law Department Management Blog
An article gave some data on the number of U.S. mobile patents 11 major players in that market have applied for and have been granted. Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug. 8-14, 2011 at 37, shows a chart with data provided by MDB Capital. I eyeballed the numbers for the likes of Research in Motion, Nokia, and Microsoft and calculated one ratio.
First, however, I am staggered that the group as a whole has applied for something like 14,000 mobile-related U.S. patents. And that on top of another 4,000 already granted. No wonder companies seek standards and patent pools as well as maintain clumps of patent lawyers and staff (See my post of June 19, 2011: patents and industry standards.).
As to the ratios, overall about 75 percent of the patents are in the USPTO pipeline, not yet granted. That represents a huge amount of prosecution activity across these major technology companies.