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IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs
theodp writes "IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.' Then there's Big Blue's Electronic Marketplace for Identifying, Assessing, Reserving and Engaging Knowledge-Workers for an Assignment Using Trade-Off Analysis, which provides a handy-dandy IBM calculator that drives home the point that you'll pay less for IGS India workers, whether onshore or offshore. And with its System and Method of Using Speech Recognition at Call Centers to Improve Their Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction, IBM describes how to operate in 'low cost foreign countries' with 'support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them' by exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as other accent reduction techniques."
If a few companies patent the entire outsourcing process, they will make it difficult for others to outsource. Then, there will be more domestic jobs and they'll have to work with immigration to outsource the labor here at home (where they will at least pump a little of their pay back into the economy).
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
If they're sucessful in holding up that first patent, that means no other companies could do it!!!! I hope they win when someone sues them or they sue someone over it. Then you'll only get cheap foreigners that don't speak english well when you call IBM support. I'm all for this one!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Be happy.
In a couple of years the dollar will have fallen so far that the Indians will be off shoring to you!
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/322652_msftvancouver06.html
I wouldn't show MS as an example of Made in the USA.
lookup the xbox production sometime too. http://www.google.com/search?q=xbox+production+international
Specifically, can you patent a business practice, or a business model?
I can understand patenting technologies that lead up to it, but patenting the whole thing? I have no idea if that's within the scope of a patent...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I love the way you criticize the English skills of call center reps, then follow that criticism with one of the more ungrammatical sentences I've read all day. Very nice, indeed.
Nice to see you're proud Windows is made in your country. I'm proud it's not made in mine.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
My ancestors fought in order to have equitable pay for work, decent working conditions, and something approaching a society where there is a reasonable middle-class.
This is the kind of thing that seeks to have the U.S. be like a third-world nation. A small group of people who control most of the wealth and everyone else not much more than slaves.
I for one, will not stand for it. I WILL rise up. I WILL start the fucking revolution. It is time for us American citizens to wake up from our slumber. We need to hang these fuckers. Every last one of them.
They have no loyalty to anything but the money in their own pockets. The rest of the worlds people should do the same in their countries. If they won't, then that is up to them to live in squalor.
I say, No Way! Not here! My ancestors didn't die in Steel Mills and Coal Mines etc. in order for the few to be permitted to take everything away from the many.
It is time to rise up! Time to start the revolution. This MUST NOT be permitted.
Only cowards will rest on their laurels while everything is stolen away from us like this. This is MY COUNTRY and I WILL FIGHT for it.
WAKE UP PEOPLE! THIS IS PURE EVIL!
Tear it down. Tear it all down. Time for a house cleaning. Time to teach the moneyed elite that we will not stand for it.
Don't give me any crappy economic arguments about comparative advantage and such. If the only comparative advantage is that one workforce has rights to decent working condition and decent wages and one doesn't, then fuck economics.
Take these people in their fancy business suits that care not one shit for you and other American Citizens. Hang them!
Rise up! Rise up! Don't be a coward! Don't sit idly by while you are robbed of everything your forebears fought and died for.
Wake up people of America! Wake up!
Fight for your rights! Fight to death if necessary! Do not allow this wholesale theft of the American Dream!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Nothing here (on the surface) seems to breaking new ground here, even in combination. Now if the system worked as it should, this patent would not be granted. Or, it were to be granted, it would be set-aside in a challenge due to prior art.
But with the Patent Office in its usual dysfunctional form and with IBM sitting on top of a team of patent lawyers that would not blush at arguing about IBM being the inventor of the wheel. It should be yet another step towards maintaining the status quo.
A call center representative is paid to have the ability to communicate effectively, if your customers are from an English speaking country that means speaking clear and understandable English.
A poster on the internet however is not...
Sam "to lazy to register" Look