Top 15 (and then some) List of Financial Services Patent Owners

Below is a list of the top 15 assignees of patents related to financial services.  The credit card industry is heavily represented with American Express owning more patents than any other financial services entity, and Visa owning the second most.  MasterCard is also in the top ten.  Among insurance companies, The Hartford has been the most active, with 60 issued patents.

The list shows a wide variation in patent activity among companies that seem to be similarly situated in terms of size and industry.  For example, Discover only has two (2) issued patents as compared to American Express with 246, Visa with 134, and MasterCard with 50. I may try to breakout the results by industry (e.g., insurance, banking, credit card) in a later entry.

Top 15 Financial Services Patent Owners

A few disclaimers are probably necessary.  It’s not a very scientific list–I just searched every financial services company I could think of to see how many patents they have.  I’m sure I have missed some important companies.  If you are aware of any financial services companies I should add to the list, please let me know.  The list only includes assignments that appear on the faces of the patents and does not account for any assignments after the patents issued.   For companies where I was aware of related entities, I combined results.  For example, Citigroup includes Citibank and Citicorp, and Wells Fargo’s total includes four patents that were originally issued to Wachovia.  Some companies use holding companies to own their patents whose names don’t match the parent company, which may explain some rather large companies appear not to have any assigned patents.  The results are limited to patents in class 705–which relates to data processing in business and finance.  So, if an insurance company had a mice problem and solved it by inventing a better mouse trap, that patent is not included in the list.  The results are based on a search of the www.freepatentsonline.com database.

After the break, is a complete listing of all the financial service entities I could find.