Several pieces of literature and media have depicted our future world as a bleak corporate like dictatorship. A world where only a handful of powerful companies own everything we eat, see and do. The mental imagery is vivid, and may even elicit a few eyerolls from most who see the concept as cheesy and far-fetched. Unfortunately, several big tech companies are making such a reality inevitable.
In the past decade, a handful of Big Tech giants have been quietly buying the intellectual rights to everything they can get their hands on. In 2019 alone; Samsung, IBM, LG, Microsoft & Intel have filed 24,637 patents:
| 1 | International Business Machines Corp | 9,262 |
| 2 | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 6,469 |
| 3 | Canon Inc | 3,548 |
| 4 | Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC | 3,081 |
| 5 | Intel Corp | 3,020 |
| 6 | LG Electronics Inc | 2,805 |
| 7 | Apple Inc | 2,490 |
| 8 | Ford Global Technologies LLC | 2,468 |
| 9 | Amazon Technologies Inc | 2,427 |
| 10 | Huawei Technologies Co Ltd | 2,418 |
The data above only accounts for new patents filed in 2019. If you were to zoom out and look at the big picture and see how many patents were filed all in all, it gets much worse:
| 1 | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 76,638 |
| 2 | International Business Machines Corp | 37,304 |
| 3 | Canon Inc | 35,724 |
| 4 | General Electric Co | 30,010 |
| 5 | Microsoft Corp | 29,824 |
| 6 | Robert Bosch GmbH | 28,285 |
| 7 | Panasonic Corp | 27,298 |
| 8 | Siemens AG | 25,320 |
| 9 | Intel Corp | 24,628 |
| 10 | LG Electronics Inc | 23,043 |
This trend will put our advancement as a species in the hands of powerful tech giants. The common man will stand in the shadows and watch, as big tech companies stifle private innovation. Hopefully we aren’t all complicit by simply ignoring the issue. Our eagerness to buy the newest Iphone, shouldn’t distract us from the harrowing implications of patent hoarding tech companies.
References:
https://www.ificlaims.com/rankings-global-assets-2019.htm
https://www.ificlaims.com/rankings-top-50-2019.htm
Cartoon is from: http://www.esprittoday.com/can-replicate-silicon-valleys-success/
