IBM is undergoing a major reorganization as it seeks to reboot and focus on growth areas, such as cloud computing, while downplaying hardware such as the x86 service business it sold to Lenovo. But intellectual capital remains one of the technology giant’s major strengths.

Scientists and inventors at IBM (NYSE: IBM)  churned out a whopping 7,534 patents in 2014. That’s the first time a company has topped the 7,000 mark. Plus, Big Blue has now led the U.S. in patents awarded for 22 straight years.

But other companies showed patent growth, too, as noted by the Wall Street Journal.

  • Google cracked the top 10 for the first time, rising to No. 8 with a 39 percent surge in patents. 
  • Apple climbed to 11th from 13th with a 13 percent surge.
  • Qualcomm rose to No. 7 from ninth place, upping its patents by 23 percent.

Annually, hundreds of patents are earned by researchers and scientists at IBM’s campus in RTP. In 2013, N.C. IBMers earned more than 700 patents.

Of the patents, more than 500 came in the emerging field of cognitive computing where IBM’s supercomputer “Watson” is being used for everything from cancer research to improving recipes.

According to IBM, some 8,500 workers in  in 46 states and territories and 43 countries produced the patents. Some 34 percent came from workers who live outside the U.S.

The news based on data compiled by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services gave IBM Chair and CEO Ginny Rometty reason to cheer. 

“IBM’s continued investment in research and development is key to driving the transformation of our company, as we look to capture the emerging opportunities represented by cloud, big data and analytics, security, social and mobile,” she said in a statement/

“IBM’s patent leadership over more than two decades demonstrates our enduring commitment to the kind of fundamental R&D that can solve the most daunting challenges facing our clients and the world.”

Samsung was a distant second at 4,952.

Of the 2014 patents, some 40 percent came in cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security – areas in which Rometty is refocusing the company

Top 10

The Top Ten list of 2014 U.S. patent recipients:

1 IBM 7,534
2 Samsung 4,952
3 Canon 4,055
4 Sony 3,224
5 Microsoft 2,829
6 Toshiba 2,608
7 Qualcomm 2,590
8 Google 2,566
9 LG Electronics 2,122
10 Panasonic 2,095

Some of the patents of note that IBM achieved came in:

  • U.S. Patent #8,661,132: Enabling service virtualization in a cloud
  • U.S. Patent #8,874,638: Interactive analytics processing
  • U.S. Patent #8,903,360: Mobile device validation
  • U.S. Patent #8,706,648: Assessing social risk due to exposure from linked contacts
  • U.S. Patent #8,869,274: Identifying whether an application is malicious
  • U.S. Patent #8,639,497: Natural language processing (‘NLP’)