America's Greatest Inventor

[Charles]

Search for the most prolific inventors is a patent struggle
...When the USPTO made that 1997 list of living prolific inventors, the No. 1 patent holder was Shunpei Yamazaki. Most of his work involves computer and video screens for his Tokyo company, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory. As of 1997, Yamazaki held 372 patents.
Today, a search of the USPTO database turns up 1,432 patents bearing his name, whupping both Edison and Weder. Yamazaki's most recent patent, granted Nov. 22, was titled, "Reflective liquid crystal display panel and device using same." His first patent, for a computer chip design, was granted in 1980. Yamazaki has averaged about a patent a week for 25 years... ...more...

[Socratesabroad]

[Charles]

But Yamazaki's at least -1 in the patent count since one patent was ruled "unenforceable for inequitable conduct" in a district court case v. Samsung (which his company SEL appealed - and lost)

Yeah, this brief article I posted totally failed to get to some core issues, like what is behind the modern patent "land grabs." I suspect Yamazaki is just trying to stake out as broad an array of intellectual property rights as possible, and that if challenged many of them would fail as in the Samsung case you cited. But in the meantime, he's got a huge patent portfolio and presumably a huge army of lawyers to enforce these rights and collect royalties, and trying to fight back in the courts is an expensive proposition.
This isn't nearly the same scene as the days of Thomas Alva Edison, which the article uses as a point of comparison.

[Socratesabroad]