IBM continues to lead the tech pack with most patents

One way to make sure no one cramps your style is to patent it.

U.S. tech companies are doing that more than ever. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, large tech firms have already received more than 11,300 patents this year.

Raking in the most licenses to protect the goods are IBM, Samsung and Google. Last year, IBM accounted for 2 percent of all patents awarded with 7,534 and this year it's on track to gain even more coverage, pulling in 152 patents on average every week. That's 21 patents a day. As of June 2, it has more than 3,100.

Samsung already has about 2,500 patents— more than half of what it scored last year. Google has managed to garner about 64 patents a week, just barely putting it ahead of Microsoft and Qualcomm.

There's more to come. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is dealing with a massive backlog of more than 600,000 pending applications.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) FindTheCompany