Posts Tagged: "Caterpillar"

A $1 trillion a year industry not wanting to pay innovators less than a 1% royalty on the innovations they appropriate (i.e., steal) for their own profits seems like a terrible price to pay given the national security and economic consequences of forfeiting our world leadership to the Europeans and Chinese… Google and Uber are locked in a patent battle over self-driving automobiles, so does that make Google or Uber a patent troll? What about General Electric, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Whirlpool, Kraft Foods, Caterpillar, Seiko Epson, Amgen, Bayer, Genzyme, Sanofi-Aventis, and Honeywell, to name just a few?

With the nearly $1 billion drop in Caterpillar’s 2015 revenue forecast, the corporation has recently announced a corporate restructuring in its dealer and customer support divisions, including new divisions in global aftermarket solutions, marketing and digital as well as wear components & aftermarket distribution. Despite the issues, the corporation still has a heavy research and development presence. It earned 488 patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014, placing it 88th overall among all companies petitioning the USPTO for patents that year; this figure was an incredible 47 percent higher than Caterpillar’s 2013 U.S. patent levels. Caterpillar’s 2014 patent earnings were much greater than heavy industry rivals Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) and Komatsu Ltd (TYO:6301), organizations which earned 214 and 132 U.S. patents in 2014 respectively. In the three months leading up to this writing, Caterpillar earned 170 U.S. patents, a quarterly pace that would see them increase the amount of patents earned in 2015 if maintained.