2012 Patent Rankings: IBM On Top, Google Spikes

bednarz writes "It's official: IBM has dominated the U.S. patent race for two decades. IBM earned 6,478 utility patents last year, topping the list of patent winners for the 20th year in a row, according to data published today from IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. Samsung was the second most prolific patent winner, with 5,081 patents received in 2012, followed by Canon (3,174), Sony (3,032), Panasonic (2,769), Microsoft (2,613), Toshiba (2,447), Hon Hai Precision Industry (2,013), GE (1,652), and LG Electronics (1,624). Earning its first appearance among the top 50, Google increased its 2012 patent count by 170% to 1,151 patents and landed at 21 in IFI's rankings, up from 65 in 2011. Google narrowly beat Apple, which earned 1,136 patents (an increase of 68%) and landed at 22 in the rankings."

Comments

IBM has quite a patent culture

[Trepidity]

Filing for patents has been a routine part of being an IBM employee for decades, so employees know how to do it, the internal bureaucracy is in place to make it happen, employees are used to identifying what might count as patentable and submitting it, and there are some minor incentives to do it (bonuses). The fact that IBM usually doesn't make embarrassing headlines with stupid lawsuits (they use them mostly defensively) helps grease that also, because employees don't feel like huge jerks filing them.

Re:IBM has quite a patent culture

[swillden]

I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but it seems like "employees are used to identifying what might count as patentable and submitting it" really amounts to "employees know to just go ahead and patent almost anything, and IBM can decide later if they want to enforce it"

Sort of.

IBM has an internal process for vetting possible patents. Employees are encouraged to submit anything and everything that seems like a reasonably novel and interesting idea to this internal process, and a committee composed of attorneys and patent-savvy engineers reviews it and decides if it makes sense to go ahead.

I never really got involved in the patent game during my 14 years at IBM, but the one patent I did submit (for a method of automatically finding faces in images) the committee deemed to be insufficiently novel. I thought it was pretty novel. It was dead simple to implement, blindingly fast and highly accurate, and this was about 15 years ago, before there were face-finding tools and libraries all over the place. But the committee shut us down.

I think that internal committee is the reason why IBM's patents tend to be fairly high quality. Some ringers slip through, of course, but I think they're the exception, not the rule.

Sheer quantity

[White Flame]

33,170 patents were awarded just in the companies listed in TFS. That means the USPTO granted almost 100 patents *per day* in 2012 to just these companies.

Now, I know that granting a single patent can be a multi-year process, I do not believe for one second that every single one of these patents should be granted (especially from software companies), nor that the USPTO made a reasonable and informed judgement on each application.

Re:From my ethics class last semester

[DickBreath]

As you say, trying to take on IBM in a patent war is stupid.

But you fail to describe the larger totality of stupidity. It is stupid to try to take on IBM in any kind of war.

Example: SCO in 2003 started a war with IBM over copyrights. (not patents)

Now that, just right there, is stupid enough. But not for SCO. To add to the stupidity, SCO had no basis in fact for their lawsuit and was hoping to discover some during the litigation. But wait, there's more! Since even double plus stupid wasn't stupid enough for SCO, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the copyrights they were suing IBM for supposedly infringing. But wait, it gets stupider! SCO claimed loudly and publicly, and more importantly in court that the GPL was not valid and even unconstitutional, while SCO continued to distribute the Linux kernel and other GPL licensed software. So IBM said "okay", and counter sued SCO for copyright infringement because IBM is a kernel contributor and SCO was now distributing IBM's copyrighted Linux kernel code without a license (eg, the GPL). Much hilarity ensued for years as SCO tied a bigger and bigger Gordian Knot. Now SCO sits in bankruptcy, with no action happening in any courts. The who fiaSCO will be ten years old this March.

But back to the topic, after SCO's initial copyright lawsuit (not a patent suit), IBM counter sued over several things, and just for good measure added four patent suit claims that would be sure to cover every single product that SCO made. This is a great example of how good patents can be used defensively against people who are uninformed about just how stupid they actually are.

In the end, IBM spent many millions more in legal costs than it would ever have cost to just buy SCO and make them shut up. But that's what SCO wanted and IBM wasn't going to give it to them. I'm sure to set an example to other would be pests who just want money to go away. Having patents can work great in that regard.

On a different note, it's too busy Google was too busy innovating instead of amassing a large collection of patents. At least, now they understand that they should be getting patents on everything instead of having a streamlined process of innovating.

Google == Motorola or due to patent wars?

[Henriok]

Is Google's spike in patents due to it taking over Motorola Mobile? And/or is it due to the recent patent wars that have ignited a lust for patents at Google?