by Dennis Crouch

The chart below is on a log scale to help fit the pieces together, but it is interesting to see how OpenAI has risen so rapidly in patent applications. Because of the publication delay, the solid lines run through the end of 2024. The dotted segments that follow cover filing months where publication is still incomplete.

Reference to Microsoft has remained at roughly 4% of all utility applications for twenty straight years, a nearly flat line running through the mobile transition, the decline of Windows as a share of computing, and the shift to cloud services. Google starts at 0.15% in 2005, passes IBM around 2011, and closes most of the remaining gap on Microsoft by the end of the series. IBM peaks near 2.2% in 2008 and drifts down to about 1.2%. Adobe peaks around 2011 and falls off from there. Hewlett-Packard runs the opposite path, starting near 0.9% in 2005, dropping below Adobe around 2009, and ending at about 0.2%. OpenAI went from nothing to passing both Adobe and Hewlett-Packard in about six years of measurable activity.