According to the patent scorecard, the so-called "pipeline power" of Microsoft's patent portfolio was the highest among all companies, with Intel coming in second and IBM third. The IEEE Spectrum is a magazine put out by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a technology trade organization.

The survey scores a company's patent-pipleline power by considering a variety of factors, including the number of patents issued to the company in a given year, the growth of its patent portfolio and the variety of the technologies a company patents.

The survey gave Microsoft, which appears in the Computer Software category, a score of 3505, the highest of all the companies included in the survey. Intel, which appears in the Semiconductor Manufacturing category, received a score of 2796; and IBM, which appears in the Computer Systems category, received a score of 2747.

Other U.S. technology companies that scored high in the survey are Micron, with a score of 1707; Nantero, with a score of 1321; SanDisk, with a score of 1220; and HP, with a score of 1175.

Acquiring patents is seen as a way to gauge a company's ability to create and develop new technologies, so having a healthy patent pipeline tends to bode well for a company's ability to continue releasing relevant technologies that its customers will find useful.