USPTO Released List of Top 10 Patent Receivers

prostoalex writes "So who received the most patents in 2004? Despite the frequent publicity around Microsoft's or Amazon's frivolous patents, these two companies are not even on the list. IBM, Matsushita and Canon received the most patents in 2004, followed by HP, Micron, Samsung, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony. IBM alone was granted 3,248 patents last year."

Comments

Re:Wow!

[Peyna]

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8.

No mention of individuals; just Authors and Inventors.

Listen Before Cook Microwaves :)

[flatulus]

I can't resist mentioning this silly episode.

In July 1992, I was attending an IEEE 802.11 meeting. The company I worked for at the time was making a major series of presentations - "coming out of the closet", as it were, after many months of revealing nothing whatsoever about their WLAN development program.

At one point, the presenter (a colleague of mine) was asked, "Your error correction scheme seems extreme. Do you really think interference in the 2.4 GHz band is going to be that bad?"

My colleague pointed to me (in the audience) and asked me to repeat a remark I had made during a coffee break, where I said, "Well, I've never seen such a thing as a Listen Before Cook microwave oven!"

("Listen Before Talk" was a new phrase coined by one of the committee members to defuse more silliness of arguing over the term "carrier sense", which had a somewhat different meaning to RF engineers as opposed to Ethernet engineers. I found the analogy appropriate -- i.e. "talk" :: "cook").

I got a brief chuckle from the committee, but no mention in the meeting minutes, so the event was lost in obscurity.

However, years later, I was searching for a particular kind of patent for a microwave oven invention I had in mind, when I came across:

Patent No. 6,346,692: "Adaptive Microwave Oven". In brief, this patent describes an invention wherein a microwave oven "listens" to the 2.4 GHz band before turning on its magnetron, on a cycle-by-cycle basis, so as to avoid interference with RF communications in the same spectrum. I.E. "Listen Before Cook." The patent was awarded in 2002 to two persons (presumably) employed by Agere Systems, since Agere is the assignee for this patent.

How's that for prior art?

P.S. My "other" microwave oven invention had to do with "listening to the sound of popping corn" to determine when the pop rate was declining, thereby determining the right time to turn off the oven, avoiding the Blackened Redenbacher Syndrome. Sadly, I was beat to that particular punch -- a broader patent existed that covered "auditory feedback" in controlling microwave oven operation.

Re:patents

[LadyLucky]

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899

Ever hear the context to that quote?

He was so inundated with work, that he sought more funding from the government. He said that anyone that would deny him more money must think that "everything that can be invented has been invented".

Changes it a bit.

Re:The stories that you don't hear

[Halo1]

One article from 8 years ago is hardly the most convincing rebuttal.

It's still one article more than what the original poster provided. But if you want more...

• 18 November 1998: IBM kills study on software patents by the Whitehouse
• 1 July 1998: IBM manages to push through patents on "computer programs that have a further technical effect beyond the normal physical interaction between a computer and a computer program" at the EPO (represented by Fritz Teufel, their head patent lawyer in Europe). An example of such a further technical effect is reducing the number of mouse clicks (as in Amazon One Click).
• 8 September 2000: Pension Benefits case: IBM manages to push through "program claims" (claims on computer programs on a carrier) at the EPO.
• 30 October 2000: Fritz Teufel, IBM head patent lawyer, takes part in a German debate representing the pro software patents side (German article)
• IBM: $1.6 billion revenue from patent licensing in 2000.

They are not just passive bystanders that are victims of the system, they are actively lobbying for ever expanding boundaries of patentability. You do not do that if you think you will not be able to extra more licensing money from others that way, or if you think you won't be able to leverage your huge patent portfolio to exercise control on the market.