TECHNOLOGY GIANT IBM was awarded more than 5,000 patents in the US last year, with its Irish operations filing, on average, one patent application a week.

IBM was awarded 5,896 US patents in 2010, according to data from IFI Claims Patent Services. It is the first time any company has been awarded over 5,000 patents in a single year.

Samsung was the second ranked company, with 4,551 patents awarded, followed by Microsoft with 3,094.

Bill Kearney, director of IBM’s Dublin Software Lab, said that although “relatively young as an IBM lab”, the Irish operations were making on average one patent disclosure a week.

IBM’s facilities in Dublin, Cork and Galway are designated the IBM Ireland Lab.

The main areas Irish researchers work on are collaboration, including instant messaging and social media, data management, mobile network management and analytics.

The establishment of the €66 million Smarter Cities lab last year has added a focus on technologies for water and transport management.

This is the 18th year in a row that IBM has been awarded the most US patents, but non-US researchers are increasingly being granted them.

Inventors from outside the US were involved with 22 per cent of IBM’s patents, up 27 per cent over the previous three years.

The other companies that made up the top 10 last year were Canon with 2,552 patents; Panasonic with 2,482; Toshiba with 2,246; Sony with 2,150; Intel with 1,653; LG Electronics with 1,490; and HP with 1,480.

The figures show that the number of patents awarded to Apple increased by 94 per cent last year.

The iPhone maker was granted 563 patents, which ranked it as the 46th most inventive firm in the US.

Although the ranking is dominated by technology firms, the awarding of patents related to software and processes has proven controversial.

The US allows business processes enabled by software to be protected by patents, while in the EU they are not.