For the 16th year in a row, IBM retains the top position in terms of US patents - with 4,186 patents in 2008, the computing giant beat out its closet rival, Samsung, by 671 patents. The number of patents awarded to IBM was almost two times that awarded to Microsoft and Intel, and thrice as many as HP.

Taking pride its achievement, the company said: "IBM's 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard's and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google - combined."

The other companies in the top 10 patent list are - Canon, Panasonic, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Sony.

Using the occasion to put across a change in its approach, the patent king said it plans to significantly increase the number of inventions it makes openly available, instead of patents. Towards this end, it said that nearly 3,000 technical inventions will be published this year.

According to a statement, the company by and large will not seek patent issuances in some specific areas, which include open-source software, education, health care, the environment and software interoperability.

Meanwhile, talking about a similar strategy being followed by HP, News. com said that the company is deliberately slowing its patent growth, seeking quality rather than quantity. In the opinion of Kevin Light, who is an IP lawyer in the company, the arrival of Mark Hurd at HP has brought about a change in the earlier mindset of "patent everything."