Wipro outpaces Infosys in number of patent applications

Software services provider Wipro Ltd filed 200 patent applications in 2013-14, more than double the number of applications submitted by rival Infosys Ltd in the fiscal.

Besides the patent requests, the company has also filed over 200 trademark applications in various jurisdictions across the world, according to Wipro’s annual report. This is a dramatic rise from fiscal 2013, when the company had filed for 53 patents. Typically, patents filed take anywhere between 6-18 months for approval.

Infosys

On the other side, Infosys, the country’s second largest IT exporter, has seen a decrease in the number of patents filed for the FY-2014, as the company battled with high attrition and internal management issues.

In its annual report, Infosys said it filed 79 unique patent applications in the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Indian Patent office in FY-14. In the previous fiscal, it had filed for 97 patents of which 87 were granted.

In 2011-12, Infosys had filed for 153 patents, up 50 per cent from the previous fiscal’s 91. In the same time frame, Wipro had applied for 53 new patents of which 15 were granted.

TCS

However, both of them are behind Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s largest software company that filed 443 patents in 2013-14 out of which, 33 were granted, according to its annual report. These filings take the total number of patent applications filed by TCS to 1,746, of which, 114 have been granted.

In the last fiscal, Infosys’ R&D came down. According to the annual report, the company’s spend decreased marginally from ₹907 crore to ₹873 crore, indicating that the company is reigning in costs in a bid to get back to higher growth, say industry watchers.

However, Indian companies are still way behind large multinationals. IBM, for instance, was awarded more US patents than any other company for the 21st consecutive year in 2013. IBM’s 6,809 patents awarded last year represent a diverse range of inventions that will position the company to compete and lead in strategic areas such as cloud computing and big data analytics, according to its annual report.