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).

Comments

Thank you IBM

[Areyoukiddingme]

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.

Re:That's the wrong number of patents

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Violations?

[DickBreath]

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.

Re:Violations?

[ranton]

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.