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Two new rankings show Microsoft rising up the list of companies that won U.S. patents in 2019, based on the total number of patents issued for the year.

The Redmond company comes in at number 6 in a ranking published Tuesday morning by Sqoop, a Seattle-area startup that provides research tools and news alerts to journalists. That is up from number 10 three years earlier, the last time that Sqoop published its ranking.

A separate ranking by IFI Claims shows Microsoft jumping to number 4, up three places since last year.

Both rankings are based on U.S. Patent and Trademark data, but Sqoop says its methodology is more accurate because it adds up the patents awarded to different subsidiaries to come up with a total number and rank for a company as a whole. Samsung came in at number 1 in the Sqoop ranking, and IBM number 2, while IFI had IBM number 1 and Samsung number 2.

A surprise newcomer to the Sqoop top 10 for 2019 is Ford. (The automaker cracked the IFI  Amazon comes in at number 12 in the Sqoop ranking of patent grants, up two places since 2016, tied with Huawei and just behind Apple.

Here’s the top 10 companies receiving patents last year as calculated by Sqoop. See the company’s post for the full rankings, including patent applications, design patents, and footnotes.

Rank Company
1 Samsung1 9,413
2 International Business Machines Corporation 9,190
3 LG2 4,938
4 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha 3,565
5 Intel3 3,501
6 Microsoft4 3,095
7 Toshiba5 2,763
8 Sony6 2,757
9 Google/Alphabet7 2,665
10 Ford8 2,507

(Post updated at 11:15 a.m. to note that Ford made it into IFI’s top 10 as of last year.)

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