Earlier this month, Cisco celebrated its 10,000th U.S. patent. Patent No. 8,478,859 enables a way to indicate presence so that end users can determine the best way to communicate.
Cisco filed its first patent in February, 1988, and was awarded its first US patent in 1992, no. 5,088,032, for the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol. Worldwide, 13,000 patents have been awarded to Cisco innovators, says CTO Pankaj Patel in this blog post.
[ARE THEY NEEDED? A case to abolish patents]
Comparatively, Apple has 6,749 U.S. patents, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; IBM has 79,000; Google has 3,000, but inherits 17,000 from Motorola Mobility; Microsoft, 23,780; Intel, 23,000; and HP about 26,000. Juniper has 1,400.
This same U.S. patent database though, as of this writing, says Cisco has less than 8,500 U.S. patents...
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