IBM is, without question, one of the biggest companies in the IT industry, from both commercial and historical points of view. Thus, it’s no wonder that it is also one of the biggest patent-holder in the industry.
According to the Reuters agency, International Business Machines Corp. in 2005 earned 2,941 patents, the eighth year in row that it received more than 2,000 patents, according to an IBM statement.
IBM’s patents included intellectual property rights related to its main businesses: computer systems and storage, microprocessors and semiconductor manufacturing techniques, software and computer services, said David Kappos, an IBM vice president and assistant general counsel.
IBM is also expected to detail three multiparty efforts to increase review of patent applications, in part by tapping open-source developers and collaborative software.
Partners include the Patent Office and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), an industry consortium that launched a “patent commons” for open-source communities in November 2005.
“We obviously can’t make all of the world’s proprietary code publicly available,” Kappos said. “What we can do is make that code that is already open-source format publicly searchable.”
“Collaboration between the Patent Office and the open-source community builds on the momentum of the open-source model,” said John Doll, Commissioner for Patents at the Patent Office. “There is powerful logic in tapping vast public resources to address the growing public interest in patent quality.”
IBM’s Sutor said that growing interest in the patent system and emerging collaborative technologies make more rigorous reviews “extremely feasible.”
Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and can result in lengthy, potentially crippling litigation. For example, patent holding company NTP Inc. is pursuing an injunction against Research in Motion Ltd. to shut down the company’s popular Blackberry service in the United States.
Through this initiative, IBM tries to impose some sense of order in this domain, and also avoid some unnecessary legal conflicts, which do nothing but delay the development of new and innovative technological products.