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

Weird

[Idiomatick]

IBM/Samsung make THINGS so that makes sense. How did MS get so many? They don't make any THING aside from xbox. You think the divide would be alot bigger than it is.

Re:Weird

[mdf356]

The Federal Circuit recently ruled en banc that if your patent doesn't involve specific physical things, it's not actually patentable. So at the moment any software not tied to a specific hardware device is invalid again.

What Congress does with this will be interesting to see. They were taking up patent reform several times in the last session. Probably half or more of IBM's patents are on software methods.

Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[blind biker]

I was talking the other day with colleagues that were pondering whether to patent an idea they had, or not. The counter-argument was that it cost substantial money to just maintain a patent - and the figures mentioned were several thousands of USD a year. IBM acquired 4000 patents in a single year. That makes me wonder how many patents are they maintaining nowadays? And if they pay, say, $5000 to maintain each, isn't that a substantial financial burden?

And if it isn't - shouldn't it be?

Re:Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[moderatorrater]

Let's not forget that they pay their employees (my uncle, in this case) nearly $1000 per patent they get granted for IBM. That's a cost of $4 million just to the employee that does it.

Re:Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[Prof.Phreak]

If we make maintaining patents cost prohibitive to a company like IBM, who does that benefit?

How about letting the patent holder determine how much it is worth, and then -they- have to pay a... property tax (or something) on that every year to maintain it. Maybe waive the fee for the first year or two. The catch is that if they say it's worth $1billion, they have to pay tax on -that-. Yet if they say it's worth $1, their tax goes away, but any future lawsuits they initiate concerning the patent would be similarly worthless (ie: ``you're infringing on my $1 patent, pay up!'').

That would eliminate corps sitting on patents and not doing anything with them...

Re:Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[mdf356]

All companies I'm aware of use outside counsel, for a simple reason: someone to blame (and sue) if something bad happens.

If a deadline is missed on a patent with significant business value, damages can be recovered. If an attorney has been suborned and deliberately sabotages the claims, damages can be recovered. You can't get damages back from yourself if an employee is at fault.

Not Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM employees get a bonus for filing patents (patent doesn't even need to be granted). And the process of filing is to submit your idea to a database and lawyers take care of the rest. They do filter what ones they will file. But there is definitely a lot of mud against the wall going on with that process. Also really helps to have a few filings come yearly review time.

Re:Can a [money] value be put on these patents?

[freddy_dreddy]

There's a large misconception that patents are solely created to shield things off (protect) without discussion. Having worked for one of these corporations gave me an insight in what they're actually used for (although I can't generalise).
Patents in my field (micro-electronics) were used to negotiate access to other patents. Corp. A holds a patent which Corp. B needs: the two sit around the table (a number of times) and B has to offer something in return - access to B's patents in most cases.
All these things are negotiated behind closed doors, only a small fraction of the cases result in court cases, but in my experience the patent is then used in it's true sense: to protect R&D or potential thereof.
Yes: there are patents which just put a lock on an idea. But these grant the patent holder access to the patent portfolio of other companies. Such patents -in almost al cases- focus on a small amount of very well-chosen corporations, to get access to their portfolio. If they don't give in it normally ends in court, there are a lot of cases like this - notably the David vs Goliath cases. You could compare it to some extent with registering a domain and sitting back and waiting to see if they'll pay up.

Re:Same at many places

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Now if only these companies would start offering bonuses for finding prior art that invalidated competitors' patents, maybe we'd see an end to some of the patent insanity.