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IBM Wins Most Patents In a Single Year For 2008
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."
Somewhere that they were going to freely allow use on around 3000 of them? That's pretty righteous.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
'IBM said it earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, more than triple the number of patents earned by rival Hewlett-Packard [...] 1,424.
Um, 1424 * 3 = 4272 > 4186 ...
2) You don't need to make THINGS to get a pattent. You can patent almost anything these days. Software algorithms are especially important for such companies like Microsoft if they don't want to be eaten by patent trolls, which is so common these days.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
So patents are against the GPL except from the ones by IBM. Wow What is IBM pay to get FSF Support.
A patent that is freely licensed for use in copylefted software does not violate the GPL. SELinux and PlusV patents are licensed this way, and so was On2's VP3 in the early days of the Theora project.
The maintenance fee for a patent increases as the patent ages.
There's the filing, search, and examination fees when you apply for it (fees depends on what type of patent it is), then the issue fee if/when it is approved (again, variable depending on type), and reissue fees if you're reapplying when your previous application was rejected (variable), then maintenance fees due at 3.5 years ($980), 7.5 years ($2480), and 11.5 years ($4110) after the patent is granted.
The most of the fees are halved for "small entities".
If I'm adding correctly, the total cost of filing, acquiring, and maintaining a utility patent (assuming it gets through on the first try) is about $10,170 and a design patent is about $8,890.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
IBM is a very large company. They make and do all kinds of things, and lots of them are patentable. I'll bet there are people who get a bit of commission if they make a certain number of patents. Also, they do some very wonderful things that deserve a patent. Wasn't there one last week?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
It reduces the chance someone will sue them.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
You could get the data directly from the USPTO here. They support full boolean searches on a large number of fields. For example, a search for "international business machines" as the assignee in the patent database shows that IBM has 52,781 patents (some of which are expired). Narrowing the search to those issued in the last year shows 4166 patents issued in 2008. The exact query I used was (an/"international business machines" and isd/20080101->20081231) without the parens. You can search patents and published applications -- IBM currently shows 27685 applications pending (and that's just those that have published since 2001).
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I would presume with the amount of patents said companies deal with, they'd just have their own patent attorneys in house on salary.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Open source project from 2004:
http://www.jchains.org
IBM Patent Application from 2006: http://aiw1.uspto.gov/.aiw?docid=us20060288401ki&PageNum=4&IDKey=0D84250DDE48&HomeUrl=http://www.uspto.gov
I'm pretty certain from your description you DON'T work for IBM. Yes, the initial stages are quite simple (submit it to a database) but later stages (through peer review, search, prior-art review and justification, advance to filing status, review of all the reams of legalese from the lawyers so you don't miss claims and so on) take a sizable commitment from the employee. And you still have to do your day job or risk getting the chop :-).