Source: Bank of America
Bank of America today announced it has recorded the most patents filed and granted in the first half of any year in the history of the company.
The bank achieved that mark during a time in which the company also aligned more than 85% of employees to work from home during the global health crisis.
The U.S. Patent Office granted the bank 184 patents during the first half of 2020, a 20% increase over last year, with nearly half of those related to artificial intelligence, machine learning or information security. The bank has applied for 415 patents, also a company record. These applications relate to a variety of banking innovations, including money transfer, bill payments, ATM transaction pre-staging, check verification using augmented reality, and cardless and device-less authentication technology.
“These numbers demonstrate our unmatched commitment to innovation,” said Cathy Bessant, Bank of America’s chief operations and technology officer. “Simply put, it is part of everyone’s job who works here. We do not have an innovation lab or an innovation team. It is in our DNA that every day we ask what we can do to improve our clients’ financial lives.”
The bank’s patent portfolio consists of 4,277 patents granted or applied for, reflecting the work of more than 5,600 inventors based in 42 U.S. states and 12 countries. At Bank of America, 26% of the inventors are women, which is double the global average. Women inventors account for just under 13% of patent applications from companies worldwide, and only 12% in the U.S., where the bank files the majority of its patents.
One of the inventors and the second-leading patent holder at Bank of America, Katherine Dintenfass said, “Our work is driven by the wants and needs of our clients. We work across lines of business to enable our clients, with the best, most comprehensive, high-tech digital capabilities, for a range of access that reflects the many ways clients choose to do business with us.”
Inventors in other companies often cite Bank of America patents as influencing their own inventions. So far in 2020, the bank has been cited by more than 2,500 patents and applications from a variety of industries, including well-known technology companies. Historically, the bank has been cited more than 32,000 times.