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."

Comments

Re:Weird

[El Lobo]

1) They make THINGS as well: mice, keyboards, XBoxes, etc.

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.

Patents can be copylefted

[tepples]

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.

Re:Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[compro01]

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.