Seeing Facebook in this patent space is not a surprise at all, nor is seeing the company as the top assignee. However, the rate at which the company is growing in the space is astounding. Facebook has had 20 documents published thus far in 2019, 46 since 2018, and 63 of their 70 total were published in the last three years. No other company comes even close to matching this rate of innovation. Facebook also has significant IP across all three categories of this sector, meaning they could provide a legitimate barrier to many other countries trying to enter or grow their IP in this space.
