Top 50 US Patent Assignees

[armando_m]

Samsung, Canon, Panasonic and Sony among the top 10 ...
Can't tell how many patents are photo related but interesting anyway

here is link to the list Top 50 US Patent Assignees

[GB1]

Don't know, and the lines now blur between photo, electronics, digital data, and so on type patents.

One thing's for sure: patents are becoming more and more important in the digital era (not that they weren't before, just even more so).

A friend who worked at Qualcomm told me they would pay bonuses for employees to develop an idea and register for patents. He now works for Interdigital, which is basically a company that develops ideas and patents, then sells rights to them, never building their own widgets.