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IBM Tops 2018 Patent List as AI and Quantum Computing Gain Prominence (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the who-is-counting? dept.

IBM earned a record 9,100 U.S. patents in 2018, marking the 26th year in a row the Armonk, New York-based company has been the top recipient. From a report: Samsung was second with 5,850 patents while tech giants Apple and Microsoft also appeared in the top ten, according to a list compiled by research service IFI Claims. IBM's latest patent haul, which topped the 9,043 it received last year, includes a growing number of inventions related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which many people see as critical technologies of the future.

26 comments

  1. "earned" by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You mean "paid for". At this point, patents mean nothing except you paid the fee.

    1. Re:"earned" by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Well you need to pay for it first.

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      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:"earned" by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm guessing you never wrote a patent before. I have. So have several family members. It's work. Believe me, once it's granted, you feel like you earned it.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  2. Re:How can their be quantum computing patents? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    There isn't AI either, but that doesn't stop them from filing "patents" on it. IBM is a failed business.

  3. Re:How can their be quantum computing patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "there", not "their". Sheezus.

  4. How exactly does... by TheZeitgeist · · Score: 1

    ...IBM make a living these days? They don't sell computers, matter of fact they don't seem to sell "Business Machines" at all that I know about. So I watch their commercials sometimes, but that doesn't help - I just learn that Watson apparently is the answer for how anodyne politically-correct worlds get smarter supply chains for lattes or something. Does IBM send an invoice after Watson makes me "smarter?" How do they get money? Who pays them? I don't know anymore.

    1. Re:How exactly does... by laffer1 · · Score: 2

      They own cloud computing infrastructure that competes with AWS. They own redhat. They do consulting. They just sold lotus.

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    2. Re:How exactly does... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IBM bills other large incompetent companies and governments.

      So they are funded by taxpayers.

    3. Re:How exactly does... by bws111 · · Score: 1

      As to 'business machines', they sell zSeries (mainframes), pSeries (UNIX servers), and storage.

    4. Re:How exactly does... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      by competing with AWS you mean "dead last in cloud". I pray they don't f-up Redhat. I have first hand experience being "acquired" by IBM in the past and it sucks. The IBM culture is a disease and kills innovation. Their consulting also sucks the last 5 years, since all of the talent left global services. IBM invented virtualization with LPar's on mainfame, but they sat on their butts for decades. Once the patents expired, VMware at their lunch and kicked their butts. On the AI front, go look at the latest and best research in AI. It's not coming from IBM's Watson group. They are patenting obvious BS stuff because that's their business model. Create a patent portfolio and sue others to make money.

    5. Re:How exactly does... by Njovich · · Score: 1

      They may not sell you a laptop, but they provide entire IT infrastructures, major applications and large scale IT consulting to organizations like banks, government agencies, etc.

    6. Re:How exactly does... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I mean, they're actually about on par with Amazon in cloud, both around $19 billion a year... the difference is IBM is more about private cloud, which is essentially what their mainframes function as and will continue to move in this direction.

      The Red Hat deal gives them the ability to more frictionlessly move data from private to public based on workloads, so essentially they want to become the cloud platform provider.

      In all, I think IBM is actually very well positioned.

    7. Re:How exactly does... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whole lotta stupid in that post. Top 6 cloud providers cloud revenue - Microsoft $21.2B, AWS $20.4B, IBM $10.3B, Oracle $6.08B, Google $4B, Alibaba $2.2B. Plus scores of smaller players. So I guess if you can only count to 3 IBM is 'dead last'.

      IBM invented virtualization 20 years before LPARS, with VM. Then they built it into mainframe hardware, then later on into POWER hardware. Not sure where you expected them to go with virtualization after that. VMWare 'ate their lunch and kicked their butts'? Good one! VMwares licensing revenue is well under $1B/qtr.

      Perhaps you could give us some examples of the 'obvious BS stuff' they patent, and a list of 'the others that they sue'.

      The IBM culture must be 'don't be a moron', which is why you failed in IBM.

    8. Re:How exactly does... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MS numbers are inflated by 2/3rds as they count their licensing which gives (free add on) users cloud services as cloud services implemented. They are still a strong business.

  5. Are all those patents truly patentable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's quite a lot, considering we still have a ways to go with AI.

  6. IBM Sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IBM is a useless company. How's that stock price doing? 10 years and no gain, have fun shitheads.

  7. HMMMM by WolfgangVL · · Score: 2

    A single entity can receive 25 patents a day... for a year.

    It seems like there should be at least a 24 hour cooldown before your next submittal.

    Or a patent tax?

    I don't know, but 9100/year seems excessive.

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    1. Re:HMMMM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why should they be limited?

    2. Re:HMMMM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many is too many? IBM has 366,600 or so employees (reported 2017), so that's about 24 millipatents/employee in a year. Doesn't sound outrageous.

    3. Re:HMMMM by WolfgangVL · · Score: 1

      Why should they be limited?

      This is an excellent question.

      I own no patents of my own, but I have been instrumental in the R&D process that led to more than one in the course of my job-duties. I'm also very critical of our (as in US) IP laws in general, and am still pretty unhappy about the state of affairs regarding the ever increasing barrier of entry regarding bringing novel inventions to market, creation and decimation of intellectual property, and the existence of patent and copyright trolls. Maybe I'm just a tech guy with an axe to grind, but from where I sit, our entire IP system is completely captured, and quite clearly runs counter to its original mission.

      I can't see how granting any single entity such a vast array of monopoly powers over technology is useful in the promotion of industrial and technological progress in the United States. It seems to me that a great majority of granted patents are buried in the interest of protecting big business, or held onto in the hope of suing some other inventor, or are added to some not-inventors portfolio for rent seeking or business class destruction of the completion. (which I understand is kinda of the point, but not on the scale we have today)

      In the case of IBM, I would expect some new products to really blow my socks off, or some novel new tech to change the way we do business computing to surface a little more frequently than it does, considering the large amounts of novel discoveries and inventions they have been discovering every single day for years.

      The USPO is run like a business. Operating 100% on the proceeds of filing fees. They collect this fee regardless of the applications outcome. They will never just reject an application. Knowing how much work a single patent application generates, and seeing a single entity walk away with this many successful applications really begs the question.... how many are rejected? How many times have these applications been thrown out on grounds of complete absurdity? How many absurd applications slip by, and how often?

      Fun fact, granted patents have to be public, or the system wouldn't work. Have a look.

      I see the utility, and hope to one day own a few patents of my own, but come on... Rounded corners?

      I propose a percentage based patent tax based on revenue or profit, or a "use it or lose it" kind of system. The former would discourage abusing the system with huge amounts of worthless applications in the hopes that even a single one gets through, and the later pretty much completely destroys patents trolls, and actually promotes advancement.

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  8. Re:How can their be quantum computing patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They patented the smoke of Quantum Computing and A.I.

  9. Re:How can their be quantum computing patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Jesus", not "Sheezus". Fark.

  10. Re:How can their be quantum computing patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Fakenews", not "Fark". Bastich.

  11. Building up illusory value for inevitable sale by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is all about future M&A activity on Wall Street. The current management of IBM is just barely superior to the management of Sears. They sold-off their laptop and hard drive divisions, they've unloaded Lotus and more. They have endlessly hyped the Watson joke and are always bragging about their patents - while never seeming to develop anything significant with those patents. Sure, they've dipped a toe into "the cloud" and they continue to service decades-old service contracts with people too stupid to move on to better vendors (i.e. bankers and government bureaucrats - the sort who still believe the old line "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM")..The true value of their patent portfolio seems at this point to be as an asset in a future sale or in an eventual liquidation (which is the only way in which management is superior to the doofuses running Sears). If the portfolio was for some other purpose, then IBM should have rolled-out some great new products based on those patents over the past decade, while they were instead selling off their manufacturing divisions that would have been needed to manufacture any new widget.