With 5,837 registered patents, Bank of America – which announces that it invests more than ten billion dollars a year in innovation – ranks first among international banks. And, on its site, Bank of America is pleased to have increased its number of patent filings by 19% in 2022. A record.
By broad categories, the patents filed by the institution in 2022 are related to data protection (27%), the application of artificial intelligence (21%), programming technologies (17%), payments (14%), mobile banking (eleven%). and data analysis (6%). These various patents have mobilized a total of more than 6,700 inventors in 42 American states and 14 countries. And 26% of these inventors are women compared to 17% on average in the world of patents. Among them, Victoria Dravneek, from fintech, filed 52 patents alone, covering categories as diverse as the fight against fraud or the customization of customer interfaces.
However, if we look at the list of the top 300 applicants of the American Association of Intellectual Property Owners, we see that Capital One filed even more patents than Bank of America in 2022. Last year, this bank was ranked 59th among applicants with 708 patents. (-1% compared to 2021), well ahead of Bank of America (75th) with 608 patents and Wells Fargo, 109th nationally, with 403 patents (-4%).
Great technological competition
For banks, these figures are considerable, especially if we compare them with those of French and European banks in general. No French bank appears, for example, in the last top 50 of the first depositors established by the INPI. The European Patent Office (EPO) lists around forty patents for BNP Paribas, Europe’s largest bank, in 2021 and around twenty in 2022.
Of course, we will always find experts who explain to us that we have to put things in perspective, that the contexts are different, such as the rules on intellectual property. And it certainly is. However, the gap is such that one wonders if we are now talking about the same thing when we say “bank” on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is striking to note that technological innovation, as well as the desire to excel at it, as well as to maintain control of it, are seen as essential issues for large US banks, particularly vis-a-vis Big Tech. By comparison, it is Of course, the same is not the case in Europe (with some exceptions, however, such as BBVA). Undoubtedly, it is largely a question of culture, as well as the training and professional career of the leaders of the European institutions. However, can we really imagine that all this does not affect the future of the banking sector as a whole in the medium or even relatively short term?
Source: BFM TV
