Top patent holders

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2005-12-13-patent_x.htm
You really can find identities of top patent holders Ah, patents. The topic has pretty much taken charge of my life since lastweek's column revealing the lack of any way to identify the top 10 living U.S. patent holders.

Apparently half the Earth's population has something to say about patents, and most of them are e-mailing me. My inbox has been blowing up like Anna Nicole Smith between diets.

But the deluge has its upsides. The column prompted a few patent database companies to take a whack at the question. Two — ipIQ of Chicago and 1790 Analytics of New Jersey — came up with answers.

So here, for the first time, is a list of the 10 most-prolific inventors. This is from ipIQ:

1. Shunpei Yamazaki, Japan, 1,432 patents. Yes, it seems to be true: The top individual holder of U.S. patents is based at Tokyo tech research firm Semiconductor Energy Laboratory. For decades, the popular assumption has been that Thomas Edison is the all-time patent king with 1,093 patents. Yamazaki blows away Edison, and he is still inventing and getting patents.

2. Donald Weder, Highland, Ill., 1,322. This isthe guy who has invented dozens of ways to make flower pots, dozens ofways to bundle flowers, and a whole lot of other things that have to dowith florists. When ipIQ sent me its results, Weder showed 1,321patents — but he got another one Tuesday. The title: "Apparatus forforming and securing a decorative pleated cover about a flower pot."

3. Kia Silverbrook, Sydney, 801. When Australia's patent agency marked its centenary in 2004, it celebrated great Australian inventions — such as vegemite. The country isn't much known for invention. On the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's 1997 list, no Australian appeared in the top 100. The secretive Silverbrook, though, runs Silverbrook Research, and he has zoomed to No. 3 with
inventions such as a tiny ink-jet printer that can fit in a mobile phone.

4. George Spector, New York, 723. Hey, here's a guy who really did invent a better mousetrap! It's patent No.5,528,853, "Magnetic computerized mouse trap," issued in 1996. Spector seems like a throwback to the likes of Dick Van Dyke's Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Spector churns out all sorts of oddities, such as the Porto Auto Oil Easy Drain and a motorized pot-washing tool. Back in 1979, Spector apparently caused quite a stir by patenting a board game with the title "puck projecting game." Some people thought he'd patented hockey.

5. Gurtej Sandhu, Boise, 576.

6. Warren Farnworth, Boise, 547.

7. Salman Akram, Boise, 527.

All three work for Micron Technology in that great mecca of American invention, Idaho. "It is rather incredible,"says Tony Breitzman of 1790 Analytics. "As a rule, other than Akram andFarnworth (who have a lot of co-patents), there is not muchduplication."

Micron is the last surviving U.S. maker of DRAM chips, which are important in just about every electronic device.

But why Micron, with its $600 million annual R&D budget? IBM and Microsoft spend 10 times that on research.

Micron CEO Steve Appleton brought up a couple of reasons. One is that in its hypercompetitive industry, Micron has to have the protection of lots of patents to survive, so "The culture of the company recognizes and rewards innovation," he says. But a lot of tech companies could say
that.

So maybe it helps that at Micron, the patent attorneys' offices are right in the labs so they can work with the researchers to nail down patents right out of the box.

8. Mark Gardner, Cedar Creek, Texas, 512.
Gardner zorks for AMD, Intel's peskiest competitor. You can find his patents deep inside AMD's microprocessors. His most recent patent, in June, was titled, "Ultrathin high-K gate dielectric with favorable interface properties for improved semiconductor device performance." I think I'm going to ask for one for Christmas.

9. Heinze Focke, Verden, Germany, 508. Focke's patents mostly center on packaging — both on types of packages and processes for packaging assembly lines.

10. Joseph Straeter, Highland, Ill., 477. Once again, we're back to flowers. Like a hockey player lucky enough to skate on Wayne Gretzky's line, you can pick up a lot of points just by being there. Straeter works for No. 2 patent holder Weder, and most of Straeter's patents are shared with Weder.

Now, 1790 Analytics came up with basically the same list, but it also ran a different version that separated out utility patents from design patents. The latter are more about changing the appearance of an existing invention. If you do that, the names on the list stay the same, except Straeter drops off — replaced, remarkably, by yet another Micron researcher, Leonard Forbes.

What else have I gleaned from the patent e-mail onslaught?

Well, I got an e-mail from Esther Takeuchi, who works on battery research for Greatbatch, a maker of power sources for a lot of medical devices. She says that she's been told she has more patents — 126 — than any other living woman and wonders if it's true.

From the lists I've seen and from poking around the USPTO's database, it seems likely that she is indeed the most-prolific female inventor.

And then there's one other oddity, pointed out by reader Michael Ravnitzky. This would be the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951.

It's possible that any patent list results are skewed because various government agencies have the ability to classify any patent as secret and make it invisible to the public.

The USPTO even keeps a chart of "invention secrecy activity." It shows that so far in 2005, there have been 106 "new secrecy orders imposed." There are 4,915 "total secrecy orders in effect."

So if among all those florist patents Weder and Straeter invented the quantum computing secret decoder ring, we'd never know about it.

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com.