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It is needless to say, patent-related legal arguments were widely covered by media lately. It is clear that the more the company has patents, the more advantage it will have over its opponent in legal disputes. The chart showed above (via ^[2] GigaOM) from mobile analyst Chetan Sharma represents the number of patents issued to companies both in the Europe and USA in the period from 1993 to 2011.

These survey of patents related to mobile communications doesn’t take into consideration their quality, which is a crucial factor in their value in the long run.

It is interesting that Apple is far down the rankings, although the company appears to have been more successful than its rivals in the patent-related disputes recently. This once more confirms that number of patents doesn’t represent the ability of a company to defend its rights in legal proceedings.

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