OC Patent Figures: Good Reading But Not Whole Story
By ANDREW SIMONS
Orange County’s most inventive company? Broadcom Corp., Conexant Systems Inc.?
Try Allergan Inc.
The Irvine drug maker was granted the most patents of any OC company from 1995 to 1999, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.
Allergan’s 243 patents for the period are nearly double the next highest grantee, Hughes Aircraft Co., now part of Raytheon Co.
That’s not the only oddity. Allergan is the only locally based patent holder in the top five and is among only five in the top 10.
Chipmakers Broadcom, Conexant and Microsemi Corp. don’t make the top 10. Sunglasses company Oakley Inc. actually counts more patents than any of OC’s chipmakers. (Conexant only has 11 patents to its name, though former parent Rockwell International Corp. ranks fifth on the list.)
But, as with all federal data, the list comes with its qualifiers and caveats.
The government grants four types of patents. The only relevant type,the one that covers new inventions,is the utility patent.
Utility patents are granted by location based on where the inventor lives. One example: Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. ranks fourth among OC patent holders based on its OC operation.
The data doesn’t include patents obtained by acquisition.
Irvine-based Microsemi, which registered only about five patents during the five-year period, actually has some 45 under Garden Grove-based LinFinity Microelectronics Inc., a company it bought several years ago.
Similarly, Broadcom has bought 20 companies,and a lot of intellectual property,in the past three years.
“A lot of our patents haven’t been issued yet and are still pending,” said Jim Bennett, a Broadcom attorney who deals with intellectual property. “We’re going to see an exponential issuance over the next few years.”
Broadcom boasts some 64 patents pending. A patent office search found nearly 80 patents applications under the company’s name, easily placing it among OC’s most inventive companies.
Patent filings are a lagging indicator of a company’s activities.
In Broadcom’s case, the company began investing in research and development in earnest in the past three years,spending likely to spur patent growth.
In other cases, it doesn’t hurt to have a large parent company.
Conexant said it actually has about 224 patents and applications, not the 11 the patent office has under its name.
Much of the research relating to some of the company’s pending patents was inherited from Rockwell, which spun off Conexant in 1999.
And while the patent data is the most current, it’s old in technology terms.
Applying for a patent is a cumbersome process that can keep an invention tied up in paperwork for months, even years, according to patent attorneys. And, like other government databases, patent records are a work in progress.
“Those patent records aren’t the most current,” said Louis Knobbe, a partner and patent expert at Newport Beach’s Knobbe, Martens Olson & Bear LLP. “It’s not unusual for patents to pend for three years.”
The government has tried to provide speedier data about patents by allowing patent applications to be searchable as are granted patents. But even data on patent applications lag 18 months or more.
“This is industrial espionage type stuff,” said Mike Sileo, an attorney for Microsemi. “I mean, I would love to know what my competitors are doing right now. But that information is closely guarded.”
And some inventions never get patented. Some companies may avoid filing for a patent for fear of exposing company secrets to anyone who wants to search through the patent office’s database.
The patent data tell more about OC’s most inventive companies in the 1990s than today.
Future figures stand to reflect drastic changes that have played out in OC’s economy.
Along with Hughes, McDonnell Douglas Corp. also scored among the top five OC patent holders. But both companies no longer exist in name here.
Before becoming part of Raytheon, Hughes dramatically cut back its OC presence during the 1990s. In 1997, The Boeing Co. snatched up McDonnell Douglas.
Another anachronism: AST Research Inc. ranks No. 10 on the list, even though it doesn’t really exist anymore.
According to the numbers, OC ranks third in the state in patents behind the Bay area and Los Angeles. Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is tops with 27,617 patents granted from 1990 to 1999.
Los Angeles counted 18,538 patents during the same period, while OC counted 11,248 patents and saw a small decline,less than 1%,in 1999 vs. 1998.
It’s worth noting that, on par, OC’s patent number is 60% of Los Angeles’, even though OC’s economy is a third the size of its neighbor.
“Of course, OC rates very high over all,” Knobbe said.
Another interesting point: companies drive patents in Silicon Valley more so than in OC. From 1994 to 1999, 28% of all OC patents granted belonged to individual filers. In Silicon Valley, only 7% of all patents filed belonged to individuals. Los Angeles came out on top, with 36% of all patents filed during the period belonged to individuals.
