A new report shows that a quarter of U.S. patents issued this year are likely to be related to mobile technology. That's up from just 5 percent of all patents in 2001, according to analyst Chetan Sharma.

For his research, Sharma appeared at more than 7 million mobile patents awarded in the U.S. and Europe, the two largest markets for patents globally at the moment. He discovered that the U.S. has stolen a march in excess of its previous world counterpart given that 1996. The U.S. accounts for nearly a few-quarters (72%) of all mobile patents across the two locations.

Samsung led all companies in terms of U.S. mobile patents granted last year, while IBM filed the most applications last year, followed by Microsoft and then Samsung. Apple broke into the Top 10 on the strength of a slew of computer-graphics patent filings.

Source: techcrunch