Israel has been ranked third in the world in terms of USregistered patents, a new study shows. According to Israel’s largest business information group, BDICoface, Israeli companies and entities registered 3,555 patents in the US in 2014, an increase of around 21% over the previous year.

Only Japan, with 445.6 patents per million, and Taiwan, with 524.4 patents per million, outranked Israel, which was ahead of South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland on the list.

According to the study the leading Israeli-based companies in the field are local branches of US technology firms Intel, IBM, Marvell, SanDisk and HP.

These are followed by Tel Aviv University’s research institutes and the Weizmann Institute, the Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They are ranked No. 6, No. 7, No. 9 and No. 11 respectively, among all institutions filing patents in the US. In Europe, however, Israeli patents fell 5% in 2014 to roughly 399 patents per million.