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

[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.

Re:Weird

[GameMaster]

While it is true that, at least, some of MS's patents are for hardware, most of them are, probably, software related. As far as patent trolls are concerned, I think you have it backwards. There would be noe patent trolls to defend against if we didn't allow software patents in the first place. Software is, simply, a math notation and we used to have the brains to rule that people couldn't patent math.

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.

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.

Re:Doesn't maintaining patents cost money?

[Zakabog]

...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?

That would probably hurt more than it would help. If we make maintaining patents cost prohibitive to a company like IBM, who does that benefit? If you've got a really good idea it shouldn't be too expensive to patent it, otherwise you're completely defeating the purpose of the patent system. Yes I know there are flaws in the system, but making it more expensive to patent things only helps the large companies that can afford it, not the small companies that might have some big ideas.

A lot of them would be deserved

[Zouden]

When IBM is doing things like increasing the resolution of MRI by a hundred million times, I'd say they must have earned a lot of their patents. They do much more research than HP or Microsoft.

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?

[John Hasler]

> The entire point of a patent is to allow a person or company to profit from their
> invention without other people ripping it off without doing their own research.

Not in the US. According to the Constitution the purpose of patehts is to promote progress in science and the useful arts:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

The courts have interpreted this as meaning that the point is to benefit society, not to protect an intrinsic right of an inventor to control his invention.