If Patents Are Weapons, These Companies Are Armed To Teeth


Bangalore: Patents are 'Intelligent Bombs,' which have the capacity to put an entire company out of business, overnight. They are used as weapons for attack and defense rather than as an innovative productivity tool. We saw many a patent war in the recent years between technology giants including the latest Yahoo's attack on Facebook. As John MacPhail of Baker & McKenzie law firm says, "Patents are being used as an offensive measure, if you don't have any patents, you don't have any weapons in your armory."

Business Insider compiled a list from U.S. Patent Office's database to find out which technology giant has the biggest patent army under its name and the list does have some interesting surprises.

Amazon: 448 Patents.

It holds a few patents, but has a powerful one in its pocket- The ability to buy stuff online with a single click.

 

 

 

AOL: 533 patents.

Recently AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told Wall Street Journal that AOL has some strategy related to patents and hinted that he might be ready to use them like Yahoo did.

 

 

Yahoo: 1,029 patents.

We all know what Yahoo is doing now with its patents.