Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IBM Wins Most Patents In a Single Year For 2008

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lot-of-paperwork- dept.

eldavojohn writes "You might have heard or felt that there is little left to patent these days but IBM begs to differ. They came in at over four thousand for the year of 2008. Now, this isn't a good metric to measure success or progress but for those of you who like to keep track: 'IBM said it earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, more than triple the number of patents earned by rival Hewlett-Packard. Microsoft Corp earned 2,030 patents, while Intel Corp had 1,776 and Hewlett-Packard 1,424, according to the report, which compiled data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics had the second-highest number of patents at 3,515.' You can find the original source of this study here as well as 2007's data and even 2006's data."

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. No, it's a new kind of math by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 2, Funny

    patented of course!

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  2. Re:math FAIL by Gat0r30y · · Score: 3, Funny
    Clearly, they must have used one of their fancy new patented algorithms to arrive at

    more than triple the number of patents earned by rival Hewlett-Packard

    --
    Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
  3. Re:math FAIL by rts008 · · Score: 2, Funny

    It was calculated in Excel, on a Pentium chip?

    --
    Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
  4. Re:Weird by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 3, Funny

    You can patent almost anything these days

    Not anymore - "Almost Anything" was IBM's 3,621st patent of last year...

    --
    Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.