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IBM Is First Company To Get 8,000 US Patents In One Year, Breaking Record (silicon.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the patents-race dept.

Reader Mickeycaskill writes: For the 24th year in a row, IBM received the most patents of any company in the US. But for the first time it got more than 8,000 -- the first firm in any industry to do so. In total, its inventors were granted 8,088 patents in 2016, covering areas as diverse as artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive computing, cloud, health and cyber security.
That's equal to more than 22 patents a day generated by its researchers, engineers and designers, with more than a third of the patents relating to AI, cognitive computing and cloud computing alone. IBM is betting big on cloud and other services, having spun off its hardware units like servers and PCs to Lenovo. The other nine companies in the top ten list of 2016 US patent recipients consist of: Samsung electronics (with 5,518 patents), Canon (3,665), Qualcomm (2,897), Google (2,835), Intel (2,784), LG Electronics (2,428), Microsoft (2,398), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (2,288) and Sony (2,181).

49 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. That's the wrong number of patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not 8086 patents? They should fire their patent lawyers, or their trademark lawyers, or both.

    1. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      You can't trademark a number in the US. That's why we have Pentiums rather than 80586s.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by Burdell · · Score: 2

      History fail; IBM used the Intel 8088 CPU in the original PC, not the 8086.

    3. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by Holi · · Score: 1

      What was wrong with the 8088, besides the 8bit bus?

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    4. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Funny

      yeah even if you could I doubt there is a marketing exec anywhere that would think "80586" is a catchy name

      That's why they came up with i7-6600K. Much more catchy.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    5. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by DickBreath · · Score: 2

      How about segment registers. This single abomination hamstrung software for nearly two decades. All sorts of stupid limitations in languages and compilers. Short jumps vs. long jumps. Arrays that cannot exceed 64K. Etc.

      Why not just have made it have a 20 bit address space in the instruction set, or even better 24 bit address space, even if there were only enough external address pins on the early chip models to support, say 640 K, which ought to be enough for some people.

      There was plenty wrong with both the 8088 and 8086. Which is no doubt why IBM selected it for their PC.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    6. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      You're right, I'm not an attorney of any sort. However I know of specific cases where a trademark application was rejected because it's just a number. So I presume other things matter besides the number-ness of the application.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    7. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by PPH · · Score: 1

      You can't trademark a number in the US.

      Better get this news to Boeing.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    8. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      Yep. 68000 assembler was a joy compared to anything else of that era.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    9. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by tim620 · · Score: 1

      You are correct. Back in the day, companies like AMD, also had 80486 (or "486") and "386" processor chips. Intel couldn't patent the number. So they renamed the upcoming (at the time) 80586 chip as the "Pentium". The rest is history...

    10. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by alexo · · Score: 1

      http://yarchive.net/comp/ibm_p...

    11. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by ckatko · · Score: 1

      I can't be the only one that hates Intel's numbering.

      AMD is pretty damn obvious. Get an FX (soon Zen), and pick the highest number you can afford in your cost/benefit calculations.

      Meanwhile, Intel is "i3/i5/i7" with a number afterward (and sometimes a T, sometimes an ML, MQ, HQ, Q, QM, QE suffix) , plus Mobile editions, plus Xeon editions. 'X' Xeons, 'D' Xeons, 'E' Xeons. Plus VERSION NUMBERS (E Xeon v3, E Xeon v4).

      Good God, Intel, get your shit together.

      Take a look for yourself and tell me whether any particular entry (without looking it up for details) is better-or-worse based solely on the model number.

      https://www.cpubenchmark.net/h...

    12. Re:That's the wrong number of patents by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      plus Xeon editions. 'X' Xeons, 'D' Xeons, 'E' Xeons. Plus VERSION NUMBERS (E Xeon v3, E Xeon v4).

      Oh? Did AMD stop selling Opterons? Intel also has a much more varied selection, as they are for different purposes. You don't want a Desktop i7 (or god forbid a Xeon) in a laptop, as you wouldn't be able to effectively cool it. On the same lines, the i3 lines are for home or business users that don't need high performance chips.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  2. Damn! by Volanin · · Score: 1

    This is the very definition of Patent Industry. What we hear as a bad thing, is a Very Good Thing for the Patents Office.
    And yet, this is such a low investment for these companies in comparison with the idea monopoly they generate... oh boy.

    --
    If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
    If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
    1. Re:Damn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just consider that every one of these patents costs at least $10k for the company (the paperwork preparation alone is probably that much)... that's a lot of R&D dollars.... most of which will never serve a useful revenue-generating purpose (except to pad the resumes of the `researchers' involved).

    2. Re:Damn! by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      It may cost at least $10 K to file each patent, but the USPTO must cover the costs of its patent application processing.

      Psssssssst. Here's a secret: Patent applications are processed by throwing them into a room full of kittens that have rubber "PATENT APPROVED" stamps affixed to their feet.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  3. Ha! by yotamoteuchi · · Score: 1

    "its inventors were granted" Inventors. Yeah, right!

  4. Violations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Can anyone honestly say that: Samsung electronics (with 5,518 patents), Canon (3,665), Qualcomm (2,897), Google (2,835), Intel (2,784), LG Electronics (2,428), Microsoft (2,398), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (2,288) and Sony (2,181) are NOT in violation of any of the 8,088 IBM's ones??? (and this is just for 2016!).

    If they can't, then why do we even bother to have such a crappy system in the first place???

    What what is this AI patent business? Are they patenting how my brain is determining what's bullshit or not? Seriously, can anyone even *think* of 8,088 distinct patent-worthy ideas that they could've gotten a patent on, just in 2016???

    1. Re:Violations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Looks like USPTO's approach is to grant all patents and let the courts sort it out.

    2. Re:Violations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Us lawyers have to eat, bro. I see a lot of complaining about patents on Slashdot but never one concrete and TECHNICAL suggestion on how the system should be reformed besides the occasional crazy person just saying "kill all patents." The system works as best as any system made by and for humans can work. We've already greatly limited software patents (the Alice Corp case) and we've all but murdered design patents (the Egyptian Goddess case) and while some life has been brought back into software patents in the last year (Bandai and Enfish) there's a lot less grey in this area than there used to be and a lot less litigation as a result. But at the end of the day the system does exist for the benefit of megacorps and they will happily file suit against mom and pops even when they know they will probably lose at trial just to crush them with legal costs and there's no way to change that because they don't care about the black letter law. Nuisance claims by 10 figure corps against 7 figure corps designed to drive them out of a segment wont go away no matter what changes you make in the law.

    3. Re:Violations? by DickBreath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Q. Why do we have such a crappy patent system?
      A. In order to keep new, smaller, innovative companies from entering the marketplace.

      Hope that was helpful. That concludes this tech support call. Please take the automated survey at the end of the call. Your call is important to us. Please enjoy this Justin Bieber 'music' while you wait.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    4. Re:Violations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I will grant that what is and isn't innovation is ultimately impossible to quantify OBJECTIVELY in the same way it's impossible to define what is or isn't a fundamental human right in an objective manner that will encompass every scenario and be acceptable to everyone. It's a concept that cant be encompassed with a simple dictionary definition. It's too big. To paraphrase one supreme court justice "I can't tell you what it is but I know it when I see it."

      That said, we've long concluded that you can't patent algorithms or mathematical formulae in the US but you can patent an "application." The problem is the people who came up with this distinction aren't coders and have no freakin idea what the hell they are talking about. All software is just data structures and algorithms. The "application" is a fancy way of saying "I applied this algorithm in a new problem." However, there is nothing innovative in IDing a use case for an algorithm or any a collection of algorithms. For starters, in virtually every instance it's literally something that can be brute forced. Implementing optimization is not innovation. It's math. What you've done is at best create a new implementation which is on par with taking words and writing a song or a book with them. Your code is more beautiful. Good for you. But it's creative and no innovative. Software should be copywritable but not patentable. There is no innovation in what we coders do. Now if you want to make algorithms patentable that changes everything.

    5. Re:Violations? by putaro · · Score: 2

      Reduction to principle. Disclosure of working source code for software patents. Scale fees to company size.

    6. Re:Violations? by ranton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I see a lot of complaining about patents on Slashdot but never one concrete and TECHNICAL suggestion on how the system should be reformed besides the occasional crazy person just saying "kill all patents."

      Plenty of people who complain about patents on Slashdot have given suggestions on how to fix the system, although my guess is your "concrete and technical" qualifiers is an attempt to set up a No True Scotsman defense against those suggestions. Some of these suggestions include:

      We could limit the duration of some types of patents, especially software patents. Twenty years is too long for a software patent. Regardless of the merits of Amazon's 1-Click patent from 1999 should not still apply today.

      Courts could be able to rule that a patent infringement case is frivolous, and create penalties against these frivolous lawsuits. The penalties system could be designed to be more harsh to larger companies and forgiving to smaller ones, and with the harshest penalties for companies determined to be patent trolls.

      Damages could be limited to a percentage of revenue made based on how much of the product infringes on the patent. It would still be objective, but would be better than what we have now.

      The patent office could perform audits of patents, and penalize companies who are patenting things which could be considered fair use. Number of patents filed per year would be a great red flag in order to determine who should be audited. A company filing 8000 patents per year could have a division of auditors permanently assigned to them. The cost of these auditors could be added to the patent filing, with no charge until your 100th filing per year (to ensure only large companies pay for this).

      These are only a few examples, but they are my favorites. They might not be concrete and technical enough for you but they highlight areas where progress could be made.

      --
      -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    7. Re:Violations? by backslashdot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No it means what that person actually has a high ethical standard for what should be patentable. Just because an idea is slightly new or unique doesn't mean it deserves to stifle up the industry with a 20 year monopoly. Just because you are the first to see a customer need for something doesn't mean someone else wouldn't have also come up with the same thing within a year or two. The only reason patents are handed out by the government is to enable progress in the "useful arts" .. so I am not sure that patenting any and every slightly unique idea is going do that.

    8. Re:Violations? by MountainLogic · · Score: 1

      The basic bargain with patents has always been tech the world how make your invention and you get a monopoly on the invention for a few years. The real, but hidden problem is the teaching. It almost always completely fails. Have you ever tried to read a patent? Let alone try tom implement from the so called teaching? I've yet to read someone else's patent that read like a text book or a specification. The teaching section is so dripping in legalese that it is useless as a technical document. Seriously, I would love to see EFF or anybody else take on a patent because it fails to teach what it claims. Want proof? Ask everyone you work with and see if any, ANY, engineer has ever had a problem and then went to the patent literature to find a solution! These documents are not written such that "one skilled in the art" can implement what is claimed. In contrast go look at the TI or National data books for TTL or analog ICs, the original IBM PC documents or even badly translated instructions from a Chinese electronics knock-off and you will find better "teaching."

  5. Not something to brag about by vvaduva · · Score: 3

    Using the power of government to protect your shitty minor inventions and intellectual property, is not something to brag about. The headline should read, "IBM has 8,000 new ways to infringe on innovation and keep competition down!"

    1. Re:Not something to brag about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      To their credit, IBM whilst maintaining the world's largest patent portfolio, appears to largely use it defensively (as they did with SCO vs IBM). IBM is prepared to be the ultimate patent troll, but mostly if someone comes after IBM first. Their portfolio is comprehensive enough that just about any given hardware or software vendor is likely infringing on multiple IBM patents. IBM also knows that's bad optics and bad for business to try to sue their competitors for patent infringement. You might think IBM would love to sue that pants off of, say SAP, or Oracle. But IBM makes millions from consulting work for both SAP and Oracle implementations every year. I have no issue with IBM protecting themselves against ligation. If they do wander into troll territory and start using their portfolio offensively that would be a major strategy shift for them and I would be concerned by any such development.

  6. Thank you IBM by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IBM is betting big on cloud and other services, having spun off its hardware units like servers and PCs to Lenovo.

    Thank you, thank you, IBM. You will finally succeed in killing off this "cloud" thing (a.k.a. somebody else's servers) because you have successfully turned the entire category into a patent minefield. When the Nazgul start sending demand letters these next three years, the whole thing will dry up and blow away. Nobody can stand against the Nazgul.

  7. Re:They violated my patent on filing 8000 patents by Dupple · · Score: 1

    But did you do it "on a computer"?

    Thought not.

    That's totally different you see.

    --
    Watch those corners
  8. Tech site for nerds by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Here we are a tech site for nerds.

    Instead of articles about interesting discoveries described by patents, new and interesting scientific insights, or discussion and debate about technical issues facing society, we get...

    IBM gets a record 8,000 patents in a single year, wow!
    Atlassian acquires Trello (for $425M), wow!
    Streaming is now #1 way to listen to music, wow!
    LG threatens to put Wifi in every appliance! (They threatened to do this? The very cheek!)
    Apple's IPhone turns 10.

    Oh, but if you're not interested in an article, you don't have to read it so it's OK.

    1. Re:Tech site for nerds by skam240 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IBM getting 8,000 patents in a year isnt of concern to techies? Nonsense

      For those concerned about inovation in any tech field these numbers are terrible news but worth being aware of. It's essentially highlighting what many of us perceive as an ever growing problem.

      LG including wifi on all it's products? Glad to now know that so i can avoid their products as i dont need the risk of malware on my fridge. Your average consumer doesnt care of even understand what something like this means. A good amount of this site's readership likely does.

      Apples iphone turns 10 isnt worth mentioning on a tech news site? I generally have no use for Apple products but the iphone was a truely revolutionary piece of tech and marking its 10th anniversary is (while a bit on the light news side) completely in line with the site. (I just wrote this post on my phone by the way)

      A quick tip, just because you dont find it interesting doesnt mean it doesnt belong on the site. I've been reading Slashdot since the 90's and it has always had a huge variety of articles posted to it and for almost just as long had people wanting the site to focus on just what they wanted. I remember the last time I addressed someone complaining about slashdot articles they were complaining about a "slashdot new low", an article about the Simpsons. I just replied with a post with about 7 or 8 links going all the way back to the 90's of slashdot stories about the simpsons.

      --
      I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
  9. Too bad most will never be used by Bearhouse · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm guessing most will serve to pad the team's pay packet and IBMs "defensive" patent portfolio that all tech (and other) companies seem to need today.
    It's all just a giant bullshit bluff game...how many, if seriously challenged, would really turn out to be genuinely innovative, non-obvious, no prior art etc.?
    IBM used to patent real stuff that went on to be built into real products - hard drives today all use discoveries made by IBM researchers, for example. Hell, when I was working there we had people who had won Nobel prizes working in R&D...
    Nowadays? Not so much...sad.

  10. Hey how super innovative by prefec2 · · Score: 1

    In a country where you can patent everything including a business model and a fart, this is no surprise. The initial idea (the one which was put forward) of patents was to protect the hard work of single poor and lonely inventor. However, it never worked very well for that purpose. In the last couple of decades it was completely converted in a weapon of big companies to battle each other in and outside court, and to protect them from smaller companies and real start-ups (not those money pampered "unicorns"). Therefore, patents should be abolished or at least replaced by non-monopoly patents where you have to share the patent and you get paid based on the price or revenue of the product of patent user.

  11. Re:samsung's patent office is ON FIRE! by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    Samsung will be hot this year. Absolutely on fire. Either they will fix their exploding phones, or the marketing department can repackage them and market them as incendiary bombs. Either way you can expect smoking hot results in Q1.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  12. Re:Rent-seeking... by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    The answer is debatable. It depends on if you are the 1% collecting rents, or are the 99% who are paying them.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  13. Why try? by AndyKron · · Score: 2

    This is why is doesn't make sense to even try. Even if you had a good idea, you''ll spend the rest of your life defending it in court against nebulous patents, and end up eating out of dumpsters while the mother fuckers in industry make the money.

  14. Sold out by thunderclees · · Score: 3, Insightful

    IBM and others are looking at big money in surveillance.

    Things like Watson were not built to explore or advance AI (though they may have had that effect). Watson was built to provide meaningful, timely answers using the giant pile of data various corporations and government entities are collecting on everyone.

    IBM has had brain drain since Neo-Con management has taken over, gutting the company in a desperate race toward a Nike model where the corporation is reduced to, IP, executives and lawyers with outside contractors doing everything else.

    I think, given who the IBM target company is, I feel our purpose is to be essential to our clients. - Ginni Rometty

  15. Yes, but ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... nobody needs more then 640K.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  16. Wait Till Next Year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It will be Over 9000!

  17. That's Amazing! by PvtVoid · · Score: 1

    They should patent it.

  18. Big Whoop! by yodleboy · · Score: 1

    They probably just dredged up 7000 old ones and added "on the internet" to them.

  19. A way to fight patents by MartinApoloniaÅrdal · · Score: 1

    Would an effort to publish non-patended and original ideas online be a plausible measure to "fight" patents? One could have an online community of people working together to come up with the ideas that could be patented and publish the idea before these mega-companies claim ownership of the idea and file them away to rot. Once it's "out there" it can't be patented, right?

  20. Not All servers.... by tim620 · · Score: 1

    "IBM is betting big on cloud and other services, having spun off its hardware units like servers and PCs to Lenovo" IBM still sells a lot of hardware. They mostly sell "big iron" stuff with higher profit margins than commodity Intel based servers. They still manufacture servers based on the Power processor, running AIX UNIX and IBMi (formerly AS/400). They still manufacture mainframes. Plus, they are still a big player in the enterprise storage server market. I'm guessing quite a number of patents still come from their hardware. Especially since it is mostly proprietary hardware, including the processors, etc. There wasn't much to patent (in comparison) in the Intel server and PC markets.

    1. Re:Not All servers.... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      indeed, I"m amazed people think "servers" == x86-64 boxes. Had a hard time recently explaining to an exec why certain AIX wares we use won't run on a machine in vmware.

      IBM got itself out of the commodity crap space including Wintel PC's and intel based servers. No profit margin there.

  21. Don't forget: IBM values patent cross-licensing by jbn-o · · Score: 1

    As we learned years ago from IBM's "Think" magazine, #5, 1990

    You get value from patents in two ways," says Roger Smith, IBM Assistant General Counsel, intellectual property law. "Through fees, and through licensing negotiations that give IBM access to other patents.

    The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we need to do through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the inventions of others that are the key to rapid innovation. Access is far more valuable to IBM than the fees it receives from its 9,000 active patents. There's no direct calculation of this value, but it's many times larger than the fee income, perhaps an order of magnitude larger.

    The analysis presented in that text file is valuable to us to understand what this means:

    The value IBM gets from cross-licensing measures the trouble that the patent system would cause IBM if IBM could not avoid it. IBM's estimate is that the trouble could easily be ten times the good one can expect from one's own patents--even for a company with 9,000 of them.

    Obviously that was written back when IBM had fewer patents, but it's no less true today. Continuing from the analysis:

    For IBM, this trouble is hypothetical--cross-licensing prevents it from happening. For ordinary companies which cannot do likewise, the burden is real. IBM's estimate suggests that for a typical software company, patents will do ten times as much harm as good. Only the elimination of patents from the software field can enable most software developers to continue with their work.

    --
    Digital Citizen
  22. Exponential Costs by labnet · · Score: 1

    You make some good suggestions.

    I would add to that.
    Make patenting costs an exponential cost for the number of patents held by related primarily benficial entities.
    Patent Renewal Cost = No Of Patents Held ^ 3
    Hold 1 Patent = $1
    Hold 10 Patents = $1000
    Hold 100 Patents = $1M
    Hold 1000 Patents = $1B

    --
    46137
    1. Re:Exponential Costs by Gonoff · · Score: 1

      How about patents not being renewable anyway?
      They run for 17 years as they once did. For that period, the inventor has a state sanctioned and enforced monopoly.
      In return for this, when the patent expires, it is made free to all. We probably shouldn't call it GPS as that is scary to the uninformable.

      They only should be transferrable upon some shortening of the remaining period. 10% sounds like a good figure.

      Example

      In January 2020 "Bob" invents a new widget and immediately patents it - expiry january 2037

      For 2 years, he sells the widget himself. Then sells it to "Peter". New expiry date July 2035. - 10% of the remaining 15 years deducted.

      3 years later, Peter sells it to "Holdings Corp". 10% of the remaining 12 years is 14 months meaning expiry date now May 2034

      The more changes of hands, the more is deducted. These two changes would fix most problems.

      --
      I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
  23. The goal is 10,000 this year by Waccoon · · Score: 1

    If you're not growing, you're dying!