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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."
I don't understand how one corporation can have 3,248 original ideas.
"We don't even give a crap anymore. No really"
-- Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1999
Free XBox, PS2
Much as I despise the patent system, I must disagree with you. Many of these companies actually ARE innovating. Many of them ARE doing real discovery. (That said, yes, most of the patents applied for by even these companies are garbage. They are playing the game by the rules that have been written. That they may be lousy rules isn't something they consider very much [except when getting sued because they didn't patent, e.g., waiting in line to use the john on an airplane by holding a ticket instead of by standing in the aile.: Patented by IBM and dedicated to the public as a good will measure].)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No surprise at all. The company I work for has IPR competitions each year and encourages employees to submit their ideas for cash prizes, etc. It's really quite a charade because it seems like they'll consider, demand in fact, absolutely anything from anyone. My job role isn't the sort where I do any technological development and at no point during my day do I have time to sit around and come up with patentable ideas. I don't receive support for any such activity and I'd never be able to pass it off to management as an excuse for being late with my results, but come IPR time I'm magically supposed to have all of these great ideas and I'm expected to just give them up too?
:)
For what it's worth, I'll openly admit that I'm a bit of a sour employee and that I really don't go out of my way in any regard.
I guess the theory is that in a company with 50000 employees, if you forcibly get 10000 submissions and just a couple percent are passable, then you're building the foundation for your company's futurte. Whether it's a foundation made of stone or straw seems functionally irrelevant.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
That and a culture of research and development.
You get a lot of smart people, ask that they publish, and watch what happens.
Add that to the understanding that licensing is just free money for stuff you don't feel like building yourself, and it's very smart.
My mom says I'm cool.
These are big powerful companies that have a culture of profit. They are no better, no more human than the computer on your desk.
The top patent recipients are actually innovating, leveraging their R&D power and making progress instead of leveraging their lawyer power and hindering progress in legal battles.
IBM has been filing patents for many years, and has maintained more or less the same level over the years. On the other hand, four years ago, we did not hear much about Microsoft filing patents. So, their absence in the top 10 is not all that surprising.
"Write to your congressman. Do it on paper no an email."
Include a check/bribe for their re-election campaign (it doesn't matter when in their term, they're already working on the campaign). Or it's going in the shredder.
Don't forget that IBM develops products other than software. Gasp! They develop hardware too! Hardware patents have been around as long as hardware has been around. I doubt many people here really care about them, and they aren't a threat to Open-Source software.
It's those stupid little software patents that are the issue. IBM doesn't need to give 1 patent to open-source, but 500 is more than enough to be considered 'a lot' by my books.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If IBM wants to give you something for free, take it!
Corporations are considered "the good guys" if their corporate culture involves building goodwill through being a good corporate citizen. Goodwill can be monetized as the value of a corporation's trademarks.
What you don't hear about is that fact that to file a patent, one must present the idea in front of a committee (called an Invention Evaluation Board) which does an initial search on the idea and evaluation of business value, then the patent lawyers do their own internal search (before sending to the patent office), then you write up the patent with a lawyer (all the time modifying to take into account any existing work), then IBM sends the patent to the patent office so the patent office can do it's search.
By the time IBM sends out a patent, it's already gone through an exhaustive evaluation by very intelligent people. Patents cost a lot of money to file. IBM has no interest in filing useless patents. And yes, there is a culture that if an idea seems at all novel then file a disclosure because we have such a strong process in place to determine if that idea should become a patent.
And is IBM using it's portfolio to do negatively? Nope. Patents are a necessary evil. Any large company has to file patents to protect itself. Being that IBM is the largest technology company in existance (320,000 employees, revenue of $86 billion a year), it's only fitting that it files the most patents.
It is PR because a lot of free software users think well of a company that is apparently doing its best to support free software against the scourge of software patents. But how many of these do know that IBM has been and still is at the forefront of political lobbying for more software patents in the world?
Making free software depend on IBM patents, and making the defense of free software against lawsuits depend on IBM willingness to assert those patents against whoever would sue free software developpers or users (see the IBM pledge : http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpa tents.pdf) gives IBM a lot of leverage on whatever happens with free software.
Furthermore, free software has been able to compete successfully with Microsoft, and to contain to some extent Microsoft software power, a thing no corporation was able to do, including IBM.
From an economic perspective, when two economic activities are complementary, and actually done by different corporations, each business sector will try to commoditize the neighboring business so that more money and profit remain available for its own activity. Commoditization of complementary business is also a way to reduce its control, and to be freer ans more secure when it comes to managing a business strategy.
This is the case for software vs services, or for hardware vs software. IBM business is mostly based on hardware and services, and software publishing is only a minor part. But software stand between the two main business activities of IBM, and gives too much leverage to whoever controls software publishing, not to mention the profit. Supporting free software is a way of commoditizing software, and thus leave more control space and profit for IBM. If in addition it gives IBM some control over basic software (especially the operating system), all the better.
So it is IBM best interest to actually get software patents and the control that goes with them, and to make some of those patents available to free software developement.
But, mind you, it is certainly not a gift or a donation. Just good business strategy.
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They don't have 3128 good idea. What typical happen in tec. company is patent everything and see what pan out.
IBM and Microsoft can be equally as evil really. There is no difference on who receives a patent.
:)
Now IBM politics are in favour of free sw just because IBM is now making money out of Linux and Microsoft is losing money because of it.
Whenever it will be the other way around, we'll be all here crying for the evilness of IBM and how M$ could save us all. Really think about what could've happened if OS2 was the winner and Windows the loser.
Probably what now seems so absurd could have been reality.
Patents are evil, whoever receives them. And they are evil both for free sw and for proprietary one. And they are evil both for sw as for hw.
We feel sw patents being more evil just because of the peculiar qualities of sw (being a product with almost no additional costs other than those of the creation of the first prototype), but really hw patents are as evil and sometimes as stupid.
Check behind your Nokia phone, the Sim retention mechanism. Do you really feel that thing needs a patent ? Do you think its mechanic is so smarter to be granted a patent ? Do you feel that patent is much better than the "single click" Amazon patent ? [Don't know if it has been granted the patent and if it's still that kind of mechanism, the last Nokia I had was the 5110 and had two pieces of plastic with the simplest mechanic of this world patent pending]
I think we, as a society, should reconsider the whole patent system. It's effectiveness is changed in its 200 years of life, and its dangers too. Patents were meant to protect IP and R&D investiments, now it's becoming a mean to convert ideas into money without the risks involved in production.
Long post sorry
The fact that a substantial part of IBM has always been research and development makes them a bit different than the opportunists who run around patenting things like one-click shopping.
Did you know that IBM created the current method for creating ultra high capacity harddrives?
Those bastards. How *DARE* they spend huge amounts of money, make money back on royalties to their discoveries, and reinvest that capital into making new discoveries!!!
It's been a long time.
It seems /.ers associate the word "patent" with evil. Any company enforcing their patent rights is automatically evil. Well that is just a load of crap. It is true that the patent office needs to completely rethink its patent granting procedure, but without patents the global bussiness model breaks down and we all lose our jobs! That being said...
/. readers dont seem to understand is that patents are not cheap. You need to pay an expensive patent attorney, and the application costs. In the end, a patent frequently costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Add to that the price of R&D and man-hours, and each patent can reprsent over 1M in corporate investment (or much much more).
In many way's IBM is a thinktank. They spend alot of money in researd and development of new technologies. For crying out loud, the PC owes much of its success to IBM R&D.
Why should other companies be allowed to use technologies and ideas that IBM spent time and money developing? Im sure you wouldnt like if I told your boss about an idea you had discussed with me, and passed it off as my own.
IBM makes 650 Million USD on patent royalties annually. Nearly 200M of which comes from hardware manufacturers. Most companies happily pay IBM their royalties. Why? Because they make alot of money from selling technology using IBM-developed ideas. IBM usually charges 1%-5% of the products price as a royalty. Not bad, considering without the IBM patented technology, your product might not be marketable!
Many other companies ($CO, for example), demand high royalties from small companies. IBM, on the other hand, supports open source and has yet to go after a non-profit or small company.
One company IBM *IS* going after is Intuit. Who the hell cares? Does Intuit donate a percentage of its income to charity? Do they feed the hungry? NO! Intuit exists to make its CEO, stockholders and employee's money.
Finally, another thing that
In conclusion, leave IBM alone until they try to patent the letter "A" or UNIX.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
No small (or even large) concern can realistically claim to have not infringed a patent for anything modern and nominally (or more) complex.
That to me is the biggest flaw to the system.