Patents seem to be the reason why the big companies of the world spend hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars in lawyers' fees. From Apple to Motorola, companies large and small are suing others for patent infringement. In the graph above we have a representation of the invention patents held by the world's major companies. The chart covers the period 1993 - 2011, however, represents only an estimate of the entire patent portfolio owned by each individual company both in the USA and in the EU. From the start we notice that Samsung occupies the first place, with approximately 12.000 registered patents and Nokia and Alcatel occupy the next positions with over 10.000 registered patents in their name.
Although Apple is at the bottom of the "ranking", the company from Cupertino has sued others that have many more registered patents and the interesting part is that in some cases it has won. Here the issue of the "quality" of invention patents comes into the discussion, that is, how well a patent protects a technology invented by the company. From this point of view, Apple is in a very good position, considering that it managed to protect itself successfully against other companies with a much larger portfolio, but against those from Nokia, it had to admit defeat and agree to the licensing of some technologies.
In conclusion, Apple is a small fish in the patent "game", but even so it is not afraid to sue companies with much larger portfolios.
