Samsung has been involved in a series of patent lawsuits over the past few years. After its patent wars with Apple and Nvidia, the South Korean electronics giant has been accused by Huawei for patent infringement. Samsung has been registering a number of patents over the past few years to prepare for such patent lawsuits.
Samsung said earlier this week that the company owns over 11,145 patents, and the company filed 23,385 patents last year alone. The company has strategically filed most of its patents in the US, 38,809 to be exact. Samsung has also filed 30,741 patents in South Korea, 15,654 patents in Europe, 10,030 patents in China, 6,746 patents in Japan, and 8,165 patents in other countries.
The company spent over $13 billion in R&D last year alone and stood second only to IBM in terms of patents filed in the US. Samsung has been in the second spot for ten straight years starting from 2006. An end product like a smartphone needs tens of thousands of patents, and if the company gets sued for just one of those, it becomes quite hard to sell that product in the market.
Samsung said, “We own the largest number of patents in the US in terms of accumulation in order to respond effectively to patent disputes to be occurred in the US. Most of them are related to smartphones, smart TVs, memories, LSI system, and currently used or will be utilized for strategic projects in the future.”
