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IBM Ditches Outsourcing Patent

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the whoops-our-bad dept.

Xenographic writes "IBM has dropped their controversial outsourcing patent, both withdrawing the application and placing it into the public domain. Apparently, it was filed eight months before they implemented more stringent reviews of their patent applications so as to avoid filing for obvious patents, especially business method patents. The notice also says that they would like to thank the community for bringing it to their attention."

1 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually... by MMC+Monster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I always wonder about things like this.

    For a multinational corporation as big as IBM, is it "evil" for them to outsource jobs to India, China, etc? What if they outsourced jobs to the U.S. Would that be considered evil as well?

    By moving jobs to where the labor is cheaper, they are proping up those economies. The more money the people have in poorer nations, the more companies will flourish there, providing more customers for services & products produced by IBM.

    It's a long-term plan for a company that plans to be around decades from now. Should it be labeled evil?

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