M&A and Patents
M&A stands for mergers and acquisitions: companies are bought, sold or combined. Before a purchase, the buyer examines the target in a due diligence review, and intellectual property is part of it: which patents the company holds, how long they run and who owns them. This section starts with that layer. It counts the patents the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) grants to the seven companies known as the Magnificent 7, issue by issue, from the office’s weekly Official Gazette.
Alysly Data Analysis: Magnificent 7 Patents
Patents Granted by Company
In the 26 issues of the Official Gazette from Apr 21, 2026 to Oct 13, 2026, the US patent office granted 161,016 utility patents. The companies in the table received 4,507 of them, or 2.8%. Apple received the most, 1,181.
| Company | Utility patents | Share | Design patents | Top technology field | Filing to grant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Apple | 1,181 | 0.73% | 402 | G06F Electric digital data processing (21%) | 2.7 yrs |
 Alphabet | 940 | 0.58% | 95 | G06F Electric digital data processing (29%) | 2.6 yrs |
 Microsoft | 828 | 0.51% | 8 | G06F Electric digital data processing (44%) | 2.6 yrs |
 Amazon | 757 | 0.47% | 44 | G06F Electric digital data processing (29%) | 2.8 yrs |
 NVIDIA | 575 | 0.36% | 2 | G06F Electric digital data processing (28%) | 3.2 yrs |
 Meta Platforms | 182 | 0.11% | 12 | G06F Electric digital data processing (21%) | 2.6 yrs |
 Tesla | 44 | 0.03% | 6 | B60W Conjoint vehicle control, e.g. driver assistance (11%) | 3.4 yrs |
Share: the company's utility patents divided by all utility patents in those issues. Technology field: CPC subclass of the main classification, with its share of the company's utility patents in brackets. Filing to grant: median in years across patents with a known filing date. As of the issue of Oct 13, 2026.
Patents Granted in the Issue of Oct 13, 2026
| Company | Patent | Title | Filed | Technology field |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | US 12764883 | Clad parts | H05K Printed circuits and casings of electric equipment | |
| Apple | US 12764825 | Low power data communications | H04W Wireless communication networks | |
| Apple | US 12764814 | Triggered multi-link access coordination | H04W Wireless communication networks | |
| Alphabet | US 12765273 | Impurity reduction for quantum devices | H10N Other electric solid-state devices | |
| Microsoft | US 12764334 | Securely encoding authenticity tokens into artificial intelligence (AI) generated content | H04N Pictorial communication and video | |
| Amazon | US 12764528 | Managing simultaneous use of private wireless local area networks and cellular radio-based networks | H04W Wireless communication networks | |
| NVIDIA | US 12764905 | Coolant connectors with embedded condensers | H05K Printed circuits and casings of electric equipment | |
| NVIDIA | US 12764899 | Tank-based dual-mode datacenter cooling system | H05K Printed circuits and casings of electric equipment | |
| Meta Platforms | US 12764803 | Systems and methods of classifying wireless devices | H04W Wireless communication networks | |
| Tesla | US 12764907 | Cold plate with integrated sliding pedestal and processing system including the same | H05K Printed circuits and casings of electric equipment |
For each company the patent with the highest number in this issue, filled up to ten rows. Titles as published by the office.
All grants from the last 13 issues, filterable by company, type and technology field, are in the patent screener. The stock pages of the seven companies list their five most recent utility patents in the fundamental analysis section.
What Patent Counts Show and What They Do Not
Every grant counted here appeared in the Official Gazette for Patents, which the USPTO publishes each Tuesday. A grant is the end of a long process. The office usually publishes an application 18 months after its earliest priority date, and examination often takes longer than that, so a patent granted today reflects research from several years ago. The table above shows the median time between filing and grant for each company, measured on the patents in our data.
Two kinds of patents are kept apart. A utility patent protects a technical invention and runs for 20 years from the filing date. A design patent protects the ornamental shape of a product and, for applications filed since May 13, 2015, runs for 15 years from the grant. Apple receives far more design patents than the other six companies, most of them for on-screen user interfaces and electronic devices.
The gazette names the owner at the time of grant, not the parent group. Large companies hold patents through subsidiaries such as Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC or Amazon Technologies, Inc., and acquired companies keep their names, such as Mellanox at NVIDIA or Zoox at Amazon. Patents can change hands after the grant. The gazette does not record that, and neither does this page.
A count says nothing about the value of a single patent. Many patents are never licensed or enforced. Others lapse early because the owner stops paying the maintenance fees, which are due 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years after the grant. The data covers only the United States; patents at the European Patent Office, in China or elsewhere are not included.
Patents in an M&A Due Diligence
In a due diligence review, the buyer’s advisers usually check the intellectual property along a few questions. Does the seller own each patent, and is every transfer recorded at the patent office? How many years of protection remain in each patent family? Which licenses have been granted to others? Are there disputes over validity or infringement? Are the key inventions also protected in the countries that matter for the business? The answers usually sit in a virtual data room, where the seller places the patent lists, contracts and correspondence for the buyer to review.
The data on this page answers only a small part of that list: who received a US patent, when, and in which technology field. It is a starting point for questions, not a review of a portfolio.