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Line 3 of table 2a represents the group of companies with 1 to 100 patents. These were not counted and hence the number of companies and patents is not known; however, the number of patents issued to this unknown number of companies can be estimated by subtraction from the estimate of the total number of patents issued to all corporations given in line 3 of table 1, and this estimate is given in line 3 of table 2a. No estimate of the number of companies with from 1 to 100 patents can be made from the present data in view of the enormous number of companies with a small number of patents, but it may be stated that the number is believed to be considerably over 20,000.

Table 2b includes in lines 1 to 10 an expansion of line 1 of table 2a, arranged by thousands of patents. Thus, line 7 of this table shows that there were 2 companies with from 4,001 to 5,000 patents each, and that the total number of patents issued to these 2 companies was 8,940, etc.

Table 2c includes in lines 1 to 9 a division of line 2 of table 2a by hundreds of patents, and gives the number of companies, and the patents issued to them, in each hundred group.

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The distribution is also shown graphically in figures 1 and 2 which depict the number of companies and the number of patents issued to them for intervals of 100 patents. In figure 2, the percent of total patents is also indicated. Each of these figures is carried only to the group 1,501-1,600, leaving 22 companies off the figures; if these were added on the same scale the figures would need to be extended about 7 times the present width and most of the added intervals would be

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the original list. This association of patents issued to subsidiaries with the parent company was not of course complete, but practically all of the subsidiaries with substantial numbers of patents would have been included.

The 394 companies with more than 100 patents hence include, to the extent indicated, the patents issued to wholly owned subsidiaries and merged companies.

In the study made in 1938, all the patents issued to corporations during a period of 71⁄2 years were counted and this count showed a total of 21,257 corporations receiving patents, the majority receiving an average of 1 or less patent per year and nearly half receiving only 1 patent during the 72-year period involved. TNEC hearings, pt. 3, exhibit 191, p. 1129. Since only the patents issued during a 7-year period were counted, the total number of corporations receiving patents for the full 17-year period would be much greater than 21,257, this number being augmented by the corporations receiving patents during the other 94-years and none during the years counted.

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NUMBER OF CORPORATIONS DISTRIBUTED BY
RANGES IN NUMBERS OF PATENTS

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DISTRIBUTION OF PATENTS TO CORPORATIONS

BY GROUPS OF PATENTS HELD

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5. PATENTS ISSUED TO SELECTED GROUPS OF CORPORATIONS, 1939–55

The patents issued to corporations are in this section divided among three groups of corporations: a selected group of 176 largest United States corporations, the other United States corporations, and foreign corporations. The total patents issued in these three groups are shown by the following table.

TABLE 3.—Patents issued to groups of corporations, 1939–55

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The distribution of the patents in these three groups according to ranges of numbers of patents is given in the following table, which is similar to tables 2b and 2c except that the corporations are divided into three groups.

TABLE 4.-Distribution of patents to groups of corporations, 1939–55

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The group of 176 largest United States corporations of the above 2 tables was selected by taking the top 150 industrial corporations, arranged by assets, and adding other companies in the same asset range which had any patents, and includes all the companies with assets of over $150 million which received any patents, with the pos sible omission of a few nonindustrial companies having only a very

few patents. The names of these companies are included in the lists of companies in the appendix."

The patents issued to individual corporations were counted for the entire 17 years, and no division by years was made (except for a few companies as indicated in sec. 8). However, in view of the fact that the cumulative index used for the count is in 2 parts, the first part closing with 1951 and the second part beginning with 1952, it was possible to obtain readily a total for the 4 years 1952-55. The patents issued to the group of 176 large corporations were also separately counted for the single year 1955 from the printed annual Index of Patentees for this year. From these figures it was determined that the number of patents issued to the selected group of 176 large corporations during the 13 years 1939-51 was 21.08 percent of the total issued during these years; the number issued to this group during the 3 years 1952-54 was 20.68 percent of the total issued during these years; and the number issued in 1955 was 19.18 percent of the patents issued in this year.

6. DATA COMPILED IN 1938

Several references have been made to data compiled in 1938, and the subcommittee also referred to that study in its report of January 30, 1956 (S. Rept. No. 1464, 84th Cong., 2d sess., p. 2). In 1938 some data relating to patents issued to corporations were compiled for the Temporary National Economic Committee and printed in the

The group of largest corporations was obtained by utilizing several lists. The latest published list of corporations, arranged by size, at the time the work was done, was a list of the 500 largest industrial corporations published as a supplement to Fortune magazine for July 1955. The Fortune Directory of the 500 Largest United States Industrial Corporations, 12 pages. This list excludes utilities and financial, transportation, trade, construction, and service companies. It was selected on the basis of net sales and not on the basis of assets, although the assets for each corporation listed (with a few exceptions) are given. The asset figures were obtained from Moody Industrial Index (1955) which gives the data as of the end of 1954. The company on this list with the lowest amount of assets has $12 million. When arranged according to assets, the list would not be complete since the companies included were not selected on this basis. The Fortune list furthermore contains some significant omissions, a few large companies having been omitted because of absence of sales data.

Another recent list of corporations arranged by size is a mimeographed list of the 200 largest corporations in the United States, excluding financial corporations, prepared by the Department of Commerce (U. S. Department of Commerce, 200 Largest Nonfinancial Corporations (1952), Business Structures Division, Office of Business Economics, 5 pages mimeographed). This list supplements the Fortune list by its inclusion of nonindustrial corporations; all the companies included have assets of over $200 million. A less recent list of corporations is a publication of the Federal Trade Commission, dated June 1951, entitled "A List of 1,000 Large Manufacturing Companies, Their Subsidiaries and Affiliates, 1948." These corporations were selected on the basis of assets, the data being taken from Moody's Industrial Index (1949). The names of all the corporations included in the above-mentioned three lists, as well as the names on an industrial list published in 1938 (see footnote 6), which were not already on it, were added to the list of companies compiled as mentioned in footnote 3, and the number of patents counted for each of them in the manner which has been described. The assets of the companies on the 1938 list and also of the top group of the companies on the Federal Trade Commission list were also brought up to date from Moody Industrial Index (1955). In addition to this, the names of other companies having substantial numbers of patents which were obtained as described in footnote 3, supra, were checked in Moody's Index for their assets. The result was a collection of the names of all the larger industrial corporations and also additional names of companies in other groups.

The companies used for the selected group of largest companies were selected by taking the top 150 industrial companies, and the companies in other categories, except financial, in the same asset range, which had any patents. The dividing point came at assets of $150 million and hence the selected group of largest corporations includes all the nonfinancial corporations with assets of over $150 million, with some possible omissions of noninudstrial companies. The total number of companies in the selected group which received any patents was 176.

The composite list of the largest corporations which was obtained from the sources and in the manner mentioned would possibly be incomplete with respect to transportation, utility, trade, construction and service companies, except in its upper range, but this deficiency would be of little consequence in considering the number of patents issued to the group.

In general, very few financial companies hold any patents; the few that do would hold them as trustee or in connection with a mortgage. Financial companies have hence been excluded from the group of large companies. Transportation companies also hold very few patents. The Department of Commerce list of the 200 largest nonfinancial companies includes 34 transportation companies; of this number 29 took out no patents and the remaining 5 received only an average of 11 each. Utility companies, with only a few known exceptions, are not holders of large numbers of patents. The Department of Commerce list of 200 includes 47 electric and gas utility companies; of this number 38 had no patents and the remaining 9 averaged 11 patents each. Trade and service companies also hold very few patents.

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