Huawei ranks 19th in number of U.S. patents awarded in 2018

China's telecommunications giant Huawei was granted 1,680 patents in the United States last year, according to a ranking released by the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO). That puts Huawei in the 19th spot in the ranking of companies in the United States awarded the largest number of new patents last year, up three spots from 2017.

The logo of the tech giant Huawei. [File Photo: VCG]

Released in early July, the ranking of organizations with the largest number of utility patents is based on data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The IPO has published this ranking each year for the past 36 years.

IBM topped the list with 9,088 patents. It's reportedly the 26th consecutive year that IBM has held the lead in the patent rankings. The New York-based giant was followed by South Korea's Samsung with its 5,836 patents, ahead of Japan's imaging technology manufacturer Canon with 3,206 patents.

Six American companies made into the top 10, including General Electric, Intel, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Qualcomm. The top 20 list contains two companies from the Chinese mainland: Huawei and BOE Technology Group. BOE Technology Group received 1,625 patents in 2018, an increase of 15.3 percent from 2017.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted a total of 307,759 patents last year, down 3.5 percent from 2017.