Last year, Bank of America earned 418 patents from the United States Patent Office – more than in any other year in the history of the company. This represents a 31 percent increase over 2018.
These milestones reinforce the culture of innovation at Bank of America. For seven consecutive years, Bank of America has been the top financial services institution on the Intellectual Property Owners Association’s annual list of 300 organizations granted the most U.S. patents, and is in the top 15 of all holders of U.S. banking-related patents and applications.
“There are few measures available that determine how innovative companies are, and the number of patents is one of them,” said Chief Operations and Technology Officer Cathy Bessant. “Innovation is at the heart of all we do. The sustainable development and deployment of emerging technologies play an important role in making our clients’ financial lives easier.”
The top three inventors — meaning employees who filed the most U.S. patent applications on behalf of the company — alone filed 156 applications. Last year’s granted patents included emerging technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and spanned the areas of online and mobile banking, blockchain, information security, data analytics, and computer programming.
Bank of America’s portfolio consists of more than 3,900 patents and applications, created by more than 5,000 inventors from 42 states and 12 countries.