The U.S. Patent and Trademark office issued 320,003 utility grants in 2017, up 5.2 percent from the previous year. U.S. patents grew just two percent in 2016, rebounding from a rare one percent decline in 2015, blamed generally on a bad economy.

“We’re more or less back on trend now,” said Larry Clady, a senior analyst at IFI CLAIMS Patent Services that released its annual report on subject.

IBM remains in first place with 9,043 grants in 2017, up 12 percent--its 25th year as the U.S. patent leader. Samsung is only 150 patents behind if you count all five divisions of the conglomerate in the Top 100. Samsung Electronics ranked second, up 6 percent, and Samsung Display was tenth.

U.S. companies lead the list but China is on the rise, growing its patent awards 28 percent last year, passing Taiwan to take fifth place. Two of China’s rising LCD makers were among the fastest-growing companies on the list.

BOE Technology Group rose 63 percent, jumping from #40 to #21 with 1,413 grants. The company formed in 1993 runs nine LCD fabs, is building a 10.5-generation plant and has annual revenues of more than $8 billion. It ranked seventh this year in semiconductor patents, ahead of Intel at #9 which has most of its patents in computers and networking.