For the 14th year in a row, IBM is the top patent holder in the United States. But is that a good thing?

IFI Patent Intelligence last week released a list of patent recipients for 2006. The top three spots went to IBM, with 3,651 patents in all; Samsung Electronics, with 2,453; and Canon, with 2,378. Tech companies are well represented. Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Micron Technology ranked fifth, sixth, and 10th, respectively.

IBM has long been the nation's top patent generator, but it has drawn heat for patenting what critics say are routine innovations. The company's been taking steps to place more of its research in the public domain. A year ago, IBM offered up 500 patents free of charge for use by open source software developers. Under the plan, IBM contributed the patents to what it hopes will become an industry-wide "patent commons," from which commercial and private developers can mine commonly used code and programming techniques.

Under the Open Collaborative Research Program, unveiled in December, results from work undertaken jointly by IBM scientists, university professors, and students will be released as open source. Subsequent intellectual property based on the research also will be open source or made available royalty-free.

IBM last week announced plans to host an online "Inventors Forum" to let researchers debate ways in which the patent system can be improved. The forum is scheduled to launch in the second quarter.

This story was modified on Jan. 18 to indicate that IFI Patent Intelligence released the patent list.