Canon Inc. has revealed that it has once again achieved high rankings in the latest preliminary patent results issued by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services.
The OEM ranked third for the number of U.S. patents awarded in 2018, becoming the only company in the world to have ranked in the top five for 33 years running. In addition, Canon once again ranked first among Japanese companies, for the fourteenth year running.
Canon says it actively promotes the globalisation of its business and places great value on obtaining patents overseas, carefully adhering to a patent-filing strategy that pursues patents in essential countries and regions while taking into consideration the business strategies and technology and product trends unique to each location.
Among these, the company explains that the United States, with its many high-tech companies and large market scale, represents a particularly important region in terms of business expansion and technology alliances.
Canon also adds that the OEM promotes the acquisition and application of intellectual property rights, not only for fundamental technologies required for next-generation products, but also such technologies as the wireless communication and image compression technologies shared by next-generation social infrastructure. Canon says it contributes to the realisation of technology that serves society by continuing to provide even better products, greater convenience and by contributing to the development of manufacturing.
Over the years, Canon has become well-known not just for the obtaining of patents, but also for their defence, with the OEM embarking on a particularly vociferous anti-patent infringement campaign in 2018, which resulted in a number of lawsuits and a slew of Report Infringement Forms filed with various divisions of Amazon.
