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Mar. 1997
According to a recent survey by IFI / Plenum Data Corporation (a U.S. enterprise providing data from official archives of the U.S. Patent Office), Nikon Corporation officially registered a total of 422 patents with the U.S. Patent Office 1996.
This places Nikon at 23rd on the list of overall number of registrants and 10th among Japanese companies.
Most of the patents pending registration were submitted in 1992 to 1993, though a few date back to the 1980s.
U.S. Ranking of Number of Patents Registered in 1996
| Ranking | Enterprise | No. of Patents |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | IBM | 1,876 |
| 2. | CANON* | 1,544 |
| 3. | MOTOROLA | 1,068 |
| 4. | NEC* | 1,053 |
| 5. | HITACHI* | 980 |
| 6. | MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC* | 957 |
| 7. | TOSHIBA* | 929 |
| 8. | FUJITSU* | 883 |
| 9. | SONY* | 868 |
| 10. | MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC* | 850 |
| 11. | GE | 823 |
| 12. | EASTMAN KODAK | 769 |
| 13. | XEROX | 705 |
| 14. | TI | 605 |
| 15. | 3M | 538 |
| 16. | FUJI PHOTO FILM* | 517 |
| 17. | AT&T | 508 |
| 18. | HP | 502 |
| 19. | SAMSUNG | 486 |
| 20. | U.S. PHILIPS | 478 |
| 21. | SIEMENS | 424 |
| 22. | INTEL | 423 |
| 23. | NIKON* | 422 |
| 24. | DU PONT | 400 |
| 25. | FORD | 383 |
| 25. | SHARP* | 383 |
