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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."
IBM is notorious for making people write papers and patents as part of their job description.
Vote for Pedro
I don't understand how one corporation can have 3,248 original ideas.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899
Remember, these companies actually innovated something.
And if you're wondering what the hell Matsushita is, well, they basically own everything.
Working with these two companies closely (lots of PSP and big screen TVs delivered this year), there is one thing that I've noticed with regards to these two companies.
Matsushita is the good guys. They license their technology out at very low prices, and if a competitor invents a similar technology, they are very unlikely to bring down the weight of their patent portfolio on them.
Sony, OTOH, is the typical portfolio protector. They are very difficult to work with because their tight-fistedness with patents and IP means that everything they do needs to be negotiated and agreements have to be made between many different IPR holders just to come up with a new product.
This is also why Matsushita (Panasonic, if you didn't know) is almost universally loved and Sony continues to put out shoddy merchandise.
I knew a guy who did an internship at IBM - I think he helped do internal IT for their boxes. Anyhow, while he was there, he was showing someone a neat trick he did with the init system on the linux boxes, so that it'd start up an interactive shell on a different terminal as soon as possible. The advantage being that if some process held up the boot, you could fix it (ie kill -9). I think dhcp was a big culprit on the distro they were using.
Anyhow, his boss recommended that he get a patent on the change.
So, I'm not too surprised to see them on the list.
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Kick the dog all you want. All you need to do is toss him the occasional bone and he'll follow you for life.
Why are people still railing on Amazon? Other than the controversial one-click patent a few years back, what have they done? I just think it's a little farfetched to be putting Amazon into the same "evil empire" category as Microsoft.
"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.
What?
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.
No idea if this has been mentioned yet, but I ran across an article yeterday that says that IBM is donating 500 of its software patents to the open source community.
Here's hoping this ends up being more than the symbolic public affairs move it resembles on the surface.
While looking into this for a post on my blog I came across the same numbers. IBM donating 500 patents seems really lame when they got 1300 this year alone and have led the US for the PAST 12 YEARS. I know IBM is a linux friendly company, but they are still a company and they are still patent happy. Now, it could be that they are protecting themselves from other people patenting their technology but still, it is interesting. I made the analogy that IBMs release of those 500 patents is the technological equivalent of picking through their garbage: they obviouslly don't have use for it anymore.
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.
How would IBM use its patents? How would Microsoft use its patents?
True, I dislike all patents. I'd rather have a perfect system of government where patents had a lifespan of, say, six months.
But in the real world, I approve of any method of using and abusing government and governmental power, so long as it's by somebody I like. Patents are a loophole in a sense, but loopholes are tools, and like guns or axes or computers, the user defines the tool, not the other way around.
So, patents cannot be evil any more than guns can. But Microsoft can definitely be more evil than IBM.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
I can't resist mentioning this silly episode.
:: "cook").
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"
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.
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.
Despite the frequent publicity around Microsoft's or Amazon's frivolous patents, these two companies are not even on the list.
It's not the quantity that matters, it's quality and topic. I mean, I don't suppose anyone minds when some company developes something useful and patents the stuff. I suppose the most of the granted patents are hardware-related, which -if it's so - I can highly appreciate and have nothing against. The reason so many people complain regarding MS-related (or Amazon, and the like) submitted and/or granted patents are the sometimes even ridiculous nature of what they seem to want to patent (just rememeber "ifnot" and the like).
Eh, but most of you already know all this so you know, I just felt that I have to drop my 2c.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
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.
I've found that Sony in general is milking a brand-name... but that cow is beginning to run dry. I haven't seen many sony products that - were they even the same price of their competitors (they're more) - I would buy on a quality basis. They make a lot of stuff that might be considered trendy. Asian students here especially seem to think Vaio is the shiznat, though really the last few of those I saw died sooner and generally sucked more than competitors (no, I'm not racist, my gf is Chinese and between her and her friends I've had my work convincing them that Sony != good).
On the other hand, I won't say I know too much about Matsushita, but I haven't done too badly by their Panasonic division.
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.
Yesterday I noticed that a simple plastic bag had been patented. I was looking at the bag to see find it's recycling logo, and there it was. Some patent number. Now, this wasn't a fancy ziplock or super-ultra freezer bag with teflon air foils or anything. This was your regular grocery store plastic bag. Not even one with holes for handles. Just a plastic bag.