According to Samsung Electronics' semi-annual report released on Aug. 22, the company held 205,816 patents at the end of June 2021. This represents a 4.1% increase over the 197,749 patents held at the end of 2020. Nearly 7,000 additional patents have entered Samsung Electronics' patent list since the first quarter of 2021.

Samsung Electronics has the most significant number of patents in the United States (80,633), followed by South Korea (44,271), Europe (39,288), China (18,879), and Japan (9,584). In other countries, Samsung Electronics holds 13,161 patents.

Most of Samsung Electronics' patents are related to smartphones, smart TVs, memory semiconductors, and large-scale integration (LSI). They are being or soon will be used in Samsung Electronics' strategic business products.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office said Samsung Electronics and other major Samsung subsidiaries had faced more than 400 patent lawsuits in the U.S. over the past five years, from 2017 through May 2021.

As a result, Samsung Electronics is focusing on securing broad patent protection. In the first half of 2021, Samsung Electronics invested 11 trillion won in intellectual property research and development, a record high for the year's first half. Intellectual property rights (IPR) investment was 8 trillion won in 2018 but had been steadily rising. More than 10 trillion won in 2019. Last year, IPR investment was 21.2 trillion won, and the figure could exceed 22 trillion won by 2021.