Names BD to Top 100 Global Innovators 2021 list
By Scott Rittman, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel
Innovation is not a buzzword at BD. It’s the heart of the company. Each year, we invest more than a billion dollars in innovation, knowing that behind every advance we make, there’s a patient who could get a more accurate result, a faster or better treatment, a better quality of life, and, ideally, more time. Given that impact, it’s vital that we continue to cultivate a culture where innovation can thrive.
How do you measure the most innovative companies? Clarivate uses a company’s patents, looking at a variety of factors—including patent volume, patent-grant success rates, global reach and invention influence—to identify, without bias, the world's most innovative organizations. In 2021, we’re proud to be recognized on their Top 100 Global Innovators list—our sixth time being named to their list—alongside companies like Apple and Google (companies are presented alphabetically, not ranked).
BD has long valued protecting innovation. In 1898, only a year after Maxwell Becton and Fairleigh Dickinson shook hands to found the company, they acquired the patent rights to produce what they deemed to be the highest-quality syringe on the market (an all-glass syringe from Luer & Company in France). They anticipated that such quality was not only the right thing to do, it would also provide a competitive advantage.
Fast forward to 2021, BD has expanded that commitment to quality across a broad portfolio of med tech devices, including those that help improve diagnoses and reduce the burden of chronic disease, that enable new care settings and expand access to care, and that better utilize smart technologies and data to improve care. We have also continued our commitment to protecting intellectual property, with a global team of two dozen IP Professionals to support our innovators, ensuring their inventions are captured and protected.
In total, at the beginning of 2021, we had around 27,000 active, issued patents worldwide and around 4500 in the United States alone. Based solely on volume, for 2020, the Intellectual Property Owners Association ranked BD 120th for number of Granted US Patents and the European Patent Office ranked BD 70th in number of patent applications filed—reflecting a significant input to the analysis performed by Clarivate that pushed us into the top 100 category.
Innovation will remain vital as we continue to look for new and better ways to fulfill our mission of advancing the world of health™—whether that’s creating a smart device ecosystem for a better picture of both patients and care trends, or understanding and optimizing medication management throughout a hospital system, or using a new technology to further minimize the invasiveness of a procedure.
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