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IBM Breaks Patent Record, Wants Reform
An anonymous reader writes "IBM set the record for most patents granted in a year for 2006. At the same time, IBM points out that small companies earn more patents per capita than larger enterprises and pushes for reform to address shortcomings in the process of patenting business methods:
'The prevalence of patent applications that are of low quality or poorly written have led to backlogs of historic proportions, and the granting of patents protecting ideas that are not new, are overly broad, or obvious.' And the company has been committing itself to a new patent policy: 'Key tenets of the policy are that patent quality is the responsibility of the applicant; that patent applications should be open to public examination and that patent ownership should be transparent; and that business methods without technical content should not be patentable.'"
How about changes to make it easier or even possible to revoke bad patents?
They see the coming collapse of the entire patent system and would rather have some capability of holding monopolies than lose any chance of it.
Poor IBM.
I have an idea though: everyone will drop all their "bad" patents at the same time. On the count of 3. Ready? 1...2...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
From my very limited understanding of the situation, it seems like there is serious problem with the patent system because small companies patent everything to protect themselves from larger companies, larger companies patent everything to protect themselves from patent trolls, and patent trolls use the massive overworked system to get patents filed which will never be found by small or large coporations in order to sue for profit.
How about only allowing people to patent inventions that have cost money (resources) to bring into the world (i.e. prototypes, experiments, ect), and not inventions that anyone can "discover" simply by sitting down and thinking hard. (algorithems, formulas, ect)?
Philosophy.
The patent system needs to be updated to reflect the world we live in now, not the world hundreds of years ago. There are many examples of patents holding back progress.
Retina scanning is a typical example of this. One group/person holds most of the patents on this tech, how many times have you had your retina scanned? There is an only a few obvious methods to get the job done and the patent holder controls all of them. I guarantee that when those patents expire, we will have mainstream retina scanners everywhere.
For a start:
1. tech patents should have a shorter lifespan.
2. Getting a software patent should be damn nigh impossible.
Don't make your problems my problems!
Sure, now that IBM has all the software patents they could ever need, they show others how to do the same thing. Of course, what this means is that IBM is pandering to an ever larger field of patentable technology through the normal process of cross-licensing (you license your patentable idea to me, and I won't charge you for X, which we already have a patent for).
I'm glad they're being reasonable about the advice they're giving, especially about "not patenting a business process with no technical content", but they're already so far ahead that they can afford to be reasonable. I don't see patent reform on the horizon as a result; IBM has too much invested in the current system to take a really progressive stance on "Intellectual Property" ownership.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
IBM wants to make it harder for smaller companies to patent business processes (or anything at all?) so that they don't get in the way of big companies patenting everything under the sun....
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
How many of the patents that IBM holds meet the new criteria? Will the one's that don't, be voluntarily revoked?
small companies earn more patents per capita than larger enterprises
Make large megacoroporations earn as much patents per capira as the small companies.
It's the same for the tax system. That could be really simple, but no it's really complex so you need tax accountants/experts. It is a system set up to maximise benefit to the practitioners.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've worked on the peripheral of their patents applications. Most of the ones I've seen are just solutions to specific problems. Meaning that anybody would come up with the same idea given the problem. So while they might not be considered obvious with a blank slate, given a need, the solution *is* obvious. The did a whole bunch of patents on remote distributed media and given the requirements of security and content management, nothing I saw wasn't an obvious solution, they all got accepted anyway.
I think IBM is just trying to preserve its commercial freedom (to sign contracts with clients and to deliver solutions in accordance with those contracts).
If you allow stuff to be patented, IBM has got to have lots of them.
If you don't allow stuff to be patented, the cost of business will go down.
Although small companies might be awarded the most patents per employee, I doubt they can actually defend their patents in court—they'll get their ass kicked immediately by larger corporations.
More and more people realize that patent clercs don't have the foggiest clue when it comes to the IT biz and start filing for ridiculous patents. Simply because it's been proven time and again that this is your way to big money for essentially no research. Just manage to get one of those trivial patents granted and you're set for life.
Is there really anyone wondering why there's a backlog from here to Albuquerque? Hell, it's more profitable than frivulous lawsuits for spilled coffee or being a general moron but there was no warning label for it.
If you want to solve this insane situation, reform the patent system. Now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You should not be able to patent business models or obvious solutions to common problems.
Yes I can see it now. Some kind of web forum populated by the technically minded with veto power. Their symbol will be a forward leaning line with a dot after it. There will be a background process that periodically sweeps the forum to get rid of "special interest" trolls.
Any system will work the way that its owners intend. While the patent system is owned by the patent lawyers etc, you won't see any changes.
If the patent holders (inventors) controlled the patent system then you'd see things work differently. There would be a feedback cycle that improved the quality of the patents. Right now, the patent system is a nice money spinner for Uncle Sam and there is no external quality check. Imagine though if you could sue for bad patents. eg. USPTO issues you with a patent so you start a business based on it, but the patent gets revoked so you had to close your busiuness. Imagine if you could chase USPTO for your losses. Likewise, imagine if USPTO had to cover your expenses when you have to take a stupid troll patent to court and they were wrong to give out the patent.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The article failed to mention that the metric will be a web-based distributed evaluation system, in which nerds in basements will view each patent and score them either "hot or not".
PLEASE!
Whine, whine - like IBM Needs protection ?
What are they? A rare striped, albino, flat footed platypus?
IBM afraid of little mom and pop companies?
I remember from an economic modeling session that the Planet Earth global economy can only support a handful of IBM sized corporations,
but an infinite number of small 2 person companies ( Think: # of Elephants vs # of Bacteria ).
If IBM wants to actually produce more patents per capita:
#1 - make more innovations,
#2 - reduce head count.
Stop running to momma like the Government is supposed to guarantee your existence.
IBM should show protect itself the old fashioned way - CRUSH the Competition,
not sell off chunks of itself and then expect to increase in profits automagically.
Spend a little more time at the old work bench, and keep delivering Excellent 5 Star service.
If IBM can't adapt, well - economic survival of the fittest.
Good bye dinosaur.
"The order and arrangement of the instructions should be registered under copyright and not patent."
Lord knows copyright gets more respect than patents.
everyone will drop all their "bad" patents at the same time.
If everyone did that, the incredible mass of patent paperwork impacting the earth's surface simultaneously would produce a force so great as to shift the orbit of the planet! If you think CO2 causes climate change, wait'll you see what THAT would do!
As an IBM employee who has been through the internal patent vetting process, I can tell you that IBM isn't just spouting off about the importance of patent quality, IBM actually does try to ensure that it only seeks patent protection for really worthy ideas.
A colleague and I (mostly him) came up with an interesting approach for quickly and accurately finding the subject's face in an photo taken for an ID card. The idea is that rather than having to carefully adjust the camera before taking the photo, or having to carefully crop the photo afterwards, it's much more efficient to have a fixed camera that covers a sufficiently large field of view that all subjects, no matter what size, will be in the image and then have software automatically identify their head within the image and crop and rescale to get an image of just the head, with the right size and aspect ratio.
I'll admit that it's not any sort of blinding insight, but there were some very clever bits in the way my colleague made it work and made it fast. Not just algorithmic details, either, but some fundamentally good ideas. Further, after we'd implemented it we discovered that there doesn't seem to be another ID photo solution on the planet that works remotely as well. Most of them don't even try to automatically zoom and crop, and those that do suck at it. To the point the 80% of the time the user has to manually adjust the crop.
So, since IBM offers bonuses for patents, we figured that it had enough novelty in it to be patentable, particularly given the crap that gets patented. We filled out the paperwork and got ready for the review board to rubberstamp our application, or maybe point out a few legal niceties that had to be corrected.
They shut us down cold. "Not novel enough". "The usage may have some originality, but the basic ideas are all commonplace". "It's too obvious".
They told us we could work on it and re-present if we wanted, but they were pretty clear that unless we found some more, better, newer ideas, IBM would not pursue acquisition of a patent on our invention. That impressed me, actually, even though I was disappointed to be missing out on the bonus.
I can't say that *all* of IBM's patents are high quality. In fact I'd be surprised if a few dogs don't slip through. But IBM really does try ensure that it only patents real, novel, non-obvious inventions. Probably mostly to avoid paying any more employee bonuses than they have to, but the industry would clearly be a better place if more companies held themselves to the same standards.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Agreed. Now if you'll excuse me I'll be in the bedroom hacking my DirectTV box to get free programming. Hey don't give me that look! The paying customers will make certain everything stays afloat.
They also have the most to lose if patents are weakened.
So I'll remain cautiously optimistic about their motives for the time being.
Thinks that the IBM formal Patent program has become too cumbersome. Patent authors pass through a series of committees that either reject them or pass them on before they are ever considered for filing. If they were awarded 3700 patents then probably 20x that amount of submissions were made at the beginning of the process. Employees are awarded for patent submssions not patents. So this new rule will thin the submissions down greatly and will force most patent submissions to come out of the research areas. With fewer higher quality patents they'll have to do far less work to process them and will award far less in bounty money.
I don't think it should be TOO easy to revoke patents, however as it stands it is much too difficult to do so. More importantly, I think that the patent systems in pretty much all juristictions are missing an important thing: RESPONSIBILITIES.
Patents essentially grant monopoly rights to inventors for their creations for an extended time (say 20 years). This is to encourage innovation by giving the inventor time to fully develop and market inventions before competitors can rip them off. This is all based on the assertion that there is always a bigger, richer, "more evil" entity out there who could develop and market an inventor's creation more quickly than a resource-strapped inventor could. Without the originally intended patent protection many inventions would've been commandeered by big, established corporations and the end result would be that innovation would die away and the only entities capable of innovation would be those with vast resources (very large corporations and governments)--and such entities by nature are anti-innovation.
The problem is that patent enforcement is only one-way--it grants protection TO the inventor but asks little to nothing FROM the inventor in terms of responsibility. I think patent reform should include a set of RESPONSIBILITIES as well as rights, and if the patent holder does not live up to those responsibilities the patent should be automatically revoked. The responsibilities I see would be something like the following:
* The inventor must plan to develop and market this invention (make it available to the public in some way) within 'x' years or the patent will expire. The 'x' year period would be much shorter than the 20 year lifespan of a typical patent, and would depend on the "class" of a patent--complex physical devices would be granted several years where simple physical objects and non-physical inventions (technical processes, etc) would be allowed only one year from the granting of a patent. The inventor may develop and market the invention himself or license it to another entity, but the patent-holder CANNOT sit on a patent without actively trying to make the invention happen. If the patent expires after this time frame it becomes public domain.
* The inventor must consistently enforce the patent--if someone willfully violates the patent and it is evident that the patent holder knows of this violation they must pursue royalties or other legal action against the violator within a reasonable time frame. There should be protection from "submarine patents" wielded by patent trolls, such as those used against RIM for example. If RIM made improper use of patented technology there was AMPLE time for the patent holder to take issue with it. It seems that the patent holders in this case deliberately waited until RIM had sufficiently deep and full pockets before reaching into those pockets for a settlement. The patent holder should have a cooperative relationship with developers and manufacturers, not a parasitic one. In such a situation the accused patent violator should have the means to have a patent revoked if it is wilfully abused this way.
* If an invention DOES get developed and is marketed publicly, within the specified time frame and is properly enforced by patent holders, then the patent can be held for the full time frame. However, it must be CONTINUOUSLY marketed/licensed during that time. If the patented item ceases to be publicly marketed/used, and/or there are no current licensees to the technology, then the patent should expire early. Although the intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation, they have become a means of SLOWING innovation because so many good ideas sit in patent files gathering dust on shelves. It is perverse that corporations out there apply for patents (or purchase the patent rights) so they can DELIBERATELY shelve them, and sue out of existence any competition that tries to use the ideas covered in them.
Patent law is just another case of what happens when rights are not balanced with responsibilities.
That's a good idea.
WTF.. IBM is complaining about frivelous/obvious patents?
IBM has a friggin' patent on the wheel!
THE WHEEL!
Look it up if you don't believe me! "Vehicle Wheel", bitches.
Basicly require anyone who wants to patent something to demonstrate their patent. This could mean a working model. A prototype. A mockup. A set of blueprints as to how one would build a device incorporating the patented technology.
In the case of a drug patent, you would be required to demonstrate plans on how the drug (or the active ingredients) could be produced.
In the case of a gene sequence patent (such as a GM crop) you would be required to demonstrate either a working (i.e. growing in a lab) implementation of the gene sequence OR steps to create such an organisim. For a software patent you would be required to demonstrate the patent (pseudocode, real code in some language, a flowchart, whatever).
One big problem with the patent system is people who think things up and get patents on them without actually using those patents.
Another thing that I would like to see is "enforce it or loose it" for patents in the same way as for trademarks. That way, patent trolls cant follow the usual "lets go after the little fish and after we get some legal backing for our patent, we can go after the big guys" problem.
Why? Because there's a serious risk that someone would bulldozer my house while I'm on vacation and build something else.
Because if that were the case, I could hold vague and broad land titles for the entire country side and do anything with the land for years until someone someone thinks its still unowned and spend the effort to build a house...
Then I jump out of the wood work and shout "GIVE ME YOUR MONIES!!!"
When you look at the land title it says that I own everything that is nearby a tree and has grass and maybe not owned by others.
And you tell me that this is so vague it could be land anywhere in the country side.
And to that I would tell you that I will see you in court and you unable to pay the court fees now have to rent the house that you spent money to build to me.
Otherwise known as RIMM and Blackberry.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Companies like IBM normally require employees to file patents to keep their jobs, no matter how trivial they are. Now they're going to war against their own employees for filing trivial patents. What did they think was going to happen? Going to war against your own employees sounds like something an American company would do.
Why would the public approve a single patent? Patents are never in the interest of the general public. Patents take away something from the public and give it to the inventor in hope that the inventor will publish more of his ideas.
And given we are mortal, it's a finite resource for any given individual.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What software invention cost "billions" in R&D. I don't believe there are any.
Forbes says that:
In 2002, IBM spent $4.75 billion on research and development. That's more, in dollars, than Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.
Infoworld says:
IBM filed more patent applications than any other company with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2005 to once again lead the annual ranking put out by the U.S. Department of Commerce office.
The company filed for 2,941 patents in 2005, which is down from 3,248 applications in 2004 but still well ahead of second-ranked Canon, which filed 1,828 applications,
Assuming the figures don't change too much annually, the average cost of an IBM patent is about $1.5M per patent. And IBM is a hardware company. I'm confident if you looked at software patents alone, that figure would be a lot less.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
The Patent office needs to wake up and start scrutinizing applications more.
This is probably also why IBM wants a notion of quality in patent applications. From some of the patents I have read you get so lost in the "patent speak", that it is hard to tell what is really being patented - think of this in the same way of trying to read a product description chock full of marketing buzzwords and double-speak. After a couple of hours of decoding the language, you might end finding that the whole document is actually describing the wheel, even though the whole thing was 20 pages long and it originally looked like it was trying to patent a new rocket engine. With this sort of problem its clear that time is wasted processing unnecessary patents, and why some patents get let through (fed up examiners).
I realise that some of this crazy writing style is attributed to legal type documents, but I have seen legal documents that were much easier to read and did not require a degree in lawyer-speak or double-speak.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I blame theoretical physics for sapping the patent office of its brightest.
Yes the OPs two assertions are incorrect especially when you understand that the "public" that he's referring to wouldn't have done anything with the ideas they do have. Patents allow someone to go beyound "talking" about an idea, and makig it into something the "public" can actually use. The other assertion that patents aren't in the public interest is plainly false. SOME patents aren't in the public interest, but not as a general case.
"No one knows it, because rather than let people figure out how to make coke, the company decided to lock that knowledge away in some vault somewhere and not let anyone but the most privileged in the company have access. If the Patent office didn't exist in the USA, that would be how EVERY company would act. With no method of preserving their business secrets, they would have to resort to hording their knowledge."
A similiar argument applies to copyright, except it's called "the patron system". Artistic endeavours going to the rich who can afford them (hording). I think that the modern majority has been spoiled by the plenty that the present system has created and assumes that the gravy train will go on no matter how much it's abused, or by whom it's being abused.
What isn't getting reported (at least not on Slashdot, for whatever reason) is that IBM's current actions are schizophrenic, if you view them in the best possible light. In the worst possible light, these actions can be viewed as an attempt to by-pass the Patent Office. To make absolutely certain that the big guys retain control over the process, and aren't pestered again by the little guys.
A superb example of this is the fact that IBM is ACTIVELY fully supportive of Software Patents, and has even used what appear to be rather bogus ones (against a company which is using Linux, no less), in order to stifle the competition.
I'm speaking about IBM's lawsuit last month against Platform Solutions. Here's one quote and link from a press article:
"IBM's decision to sue Platform Solutions is another indication that the company is becoming more aggressive about defending its intellectual property in an effort to extract more revenue from its extensive patent trove."
There are other links if you do a Google search; but it's pretty clear that IBM wants to keep this as quiet as possible.
The point remains though, that IBM is being extremely agressive with Software Patents, against what appear to be Linux-based products. And anything IBM says about "improving the quality" is utter BS. Their priority is to improve the bottom line.
Sorry if that pops some people's bubbles about IBM. There is no question that IBM has been helpful to the Open Source community. But it's quite clear that this only goes so far. And as long as they are actively working as a Patent Troll to stifle competition, IBM cannot be trusted.
Let us hope that it doesn't go so far as submarine patents. But honestly, I've never seen a big company play nice out of the goodness of their heart yet, when it comes to their competition.
IBM might have struck me as leaning that way before last month. But not any more.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
These days they would have said, "Sorry Albert, but your current job is a patent clerk and we're looking for somebody with current experience as a theoretical physicist".
These patents are more valuable than money, and with the treasure trove they have, they can't afford to have such a broken system that people might finally see the light and demand complete abolishment. It's not about reform. It's about protecting an investment.
What?
IBM set the record for most patents granted in a year for 2006.
More proof that global warming exists, and is caused by man!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The big difference is that trade secrets does not prevent me from use my own ideas. Patents does, which is a huge limitation in the personal freedom. Trade-secrets, like copyrights, only prevent me from duplicating other peoples ideas (or expressions), which is much less of a violation.
BTW, when you say "schizophrenic", I say they're covering all the bases. And yeah, it's really annoying, but predictable if you consider they're trying to act in their best interests.
| The big advantages that patents have over trade secrets are that they:
|
| 1. Have a limited term
| 2. Require that you publish how you did it
True. This was why patents were invented in the first place, and many, many years ago those effect probably gave higher ECONOMIC benefits that the ECONOMIC drawbacks created by the monopoly. I very much doubt that is true anymore, and wasn't what I was talking about anyway.
| Trade secrets tie up the idea in perpituity
They tie up the idea for as long as nobody else get the same idea, which mean that they can apply to non-trivial ideas. In fact, the length of your monopoly is proportional to how non-obvious your idea is.
> and cause their inventors to keep the idea as secret as possible.
True, which means they can not used to get a monopoly on interfaces, nor can you start enforcing the monopoly after the industry has begun
> There are all kinds of negative effects from this.
> Imagine drug companies operating with this set of rules.
Heh, drug companies won't be allowed to publish their drugs unless they reveal what they contain. They may be able to keep the process of creating the drug a trade-secret, but not constituents of the finished products. So all competitors would have to do was to guess how to come up with that
The largest effect of abolishing patents would much cheaper medicine, which would
1) make the medicine affordable to many more people, and
2) free up a lot of money for research that
2a) could be shared freely between researchers, and thus avoid much of the duplication of effort in the current system, and
2b) would not be directed solely on patentable products, but also on new used of old remedies, as well as various life style changes.
Millions of lives would be saved every year (due to #1) if we abolished patents on medicine, and the number would increase over time (due to #2).
| Yes, you can use your own ideas in this environment. But your won't have the ideas expressed
| in technical literature, scientific journals (at least publications from organizations that
| want to make money like universities etc.) and of course the patents themselves to base your
| ideas on. And of course you have to be pretty damn egotistical to think that the ideas YOU
| personally have outweigh all the ideas that everyone else has.
I was talking freedom there, not utility. I am a programmer, I have broken the law (unknowingly) many times. I have often used techniques in my programs that I later learned were patented (like using XOR to implement a cursor, I did that as a kid while the patent was still valid, only learned about the patent decades later). The is my main emotional problem with patents, they basically give me the choice of 1) become a criminal, 2) become a lawyer. Of course there is also 3) get employment in a huge corporation like IBM with cross-licensing agreements with all the other large players in the patent field. None of the options are to my liking.
You can of course argue that this only calls for a reform of the patent system, and I agree that with a much more strict enforcement of "non-trivial" would make it extremely unlikely that people would "unintentionally" violate patents. And it would probably be possible to formulate the law to that interface patents and submarine patents would be rare or even impossible.
However, I don't think this can happen. Once you give people special privileges, they tend to treat them as God given rights, and fight for their extension. Just look at the copyright scene. And when money is involved it gets worse. For patents, not just the patent holders, but the entire patent industry fight for extending their application area. In Europe, EPO, which ought to be neutral, was the main lobbyist (and in fact the driving force), between the attempt to make software patents valid.
| Ultimately the loss of the ability to publish and have the commercial value of t