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IBM Is First Company To Get 8,000 US Patents In One Year, Breaking Record (silicon.co.uk)
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).
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).
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.
Looks like USPTO's approach is to grant all patents and let the courts sort it out.
History fail; IBM used the Intel 8088 CPU in the original PC, not the 8086.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Q. Why do we have such a crappy patent system?
A. In order to keep new, smaller, innovative companies from entering the marketplace.
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I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Reduction to principle. Disclosure of working source code for software patents. Scale fees to company size.
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
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.
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
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.