We ranked companies in key industries according to the quality and quantity of their patents. Here are 150 of the world’s top firms.

Company
Lockheed Martin		313/1	282/1	329	307	0.95	0.92	2.70	1.82	8.5	8.5
United Technologies		207/2	221/2	345	335	0.60	0.66	0.33	0.42	10.8	9.8
Boeing		153/3	187/3	232	223	0.66	0.84	0.54	0.78	11.4	13.0
Rockwell International		114/4	176/4	112	175	1.02	1.01	0.34	0.53	7.1	7.6
Northrop Grumman		96/5	113/5	132	145	0.73	0.78	0.37	0.63	9.3	8.9
Thomson-CSF		74/6	83/6	97	113	0.76	0.73	0.58	0.69	8.8	8.1
EADS		66/7	75/7	126	132	0.52	0.57	0.27	0.35	13.4	10.8
Textron		51/8	73/8	61	77	0.83	0.95	0.05	0.27	13.3	10.4
Sequa		40/9	16/11	29	16	1.39	1.01	0.07	0.38	10.3	13.5
SNECMA		27/10	31/9	63	68	0.43	0.45	0.37	0.24	11.1	11.9
General Dynamics		22/11	12/12	28	14	0.80	0.81	0.04	6.28	12.4	10.8
GKN		19/12	23/10	28	37	0.68	0.62	0.04	0.24	12.1	9.4
Alliant Techsystems		13/13	6/13	13	10	0.98	0.63	0.92	1.33	13.3	10.6

*average

Indexing Innovation

Technology Review has teamed with CHI Research of Haddon Heights, NJ, to produce the Patent Scorecard, an industry-by-industry ranking of corporate patent portfolios. CHI combines the number of a firm’s patents with other indicators to flesh out this deeper picture of innovation. Here are the specifics:

Technology Strength: This figure, the basis of the rankings, provides an overall assessment of a firm’s intellectual-property power. It is calculated by multiplying the number of a company’s U.S. patents by its Current Impact Index (see below).

Number of Patents: The total number of U.S. patents awarded, excluding design and other special-case inventions.

Current Impact Index: This measure showcases the broader significance of a company’s patents by examining how often its U.S. patents from the previous five years are cited as “prior art” in the current year’s batch. A value of 1.0 represents average citation frequency; so 1.4 would indicate a company’s patents were cited 40 percent more often than average, and so on.

Science Linkage: Patents sometimes cite scientific papers as prior art. This value shows the average number of science references listed in a company’s U.S. patents. A high figure indicates the company is closer to the cutting edge than its competitors.

Technology Cycle Time: An indicator of a firm’s speed in turning leading-edge technology into intellectual property, defined as the median age (in years) of the U.S. patents cited as prior art in the company’s patents.