Perpetual Innovation

Category: IBM

  • IBM and China. #1 in the world of Patents

    IBM is again the patent king with the most patents issued. Now just under 6,500 issued in a single year. That’s issued, not applications.


    IBM

    •Celebrated 101 years since its first patent
    •In 2012 was its 20th year as most US patents
    •In 2012 received 6,478 patents! (not applications!)
    •Spent $6B on R&D  … roughly $1m per patent.
    •IBM makes $1B+ per year on IP sales/licensing!
    => That is almost pure profit$!

    This is a fun article about the big patent companies and IBM’s Watson system beating out the best and the brightest on the show Jeopardy. 

    In the meanwhile, China has moved up to the busiest patent office in the world! It was only a couple years ago that they were 5th and not long prior to that they they were not a signatory on IP treaties!..


  • AP: Yahoo, Facebook strike patent truce, ad alliance

    The Associated Press: Yahoo, Facebook strike patent truce, ad alliance:
    “Yahoo’s legal assault had exposed Facebook’s vulnerability to patent claims as it prepared to complete the biggest initial public offering of stock by an Internet company.”

    So Facebook had to go out and build its own war chest of patents: 750 here, 650 there. Now the law suit goes away and everybody’s making nice.

    “Facebook insulated itself by buying 750 patents from IBM Corp. for an undisclosed amount and spending $550 million to acquire another 650 patents that one of its biggest shareholders, Microsoft Corp., had purchased from AOL Inc. Armed with its own arsenal of intellectual property, Facebook signaled that it wasn’t backing down and filed its own patent infringement lawsuit against Yahoo in April.” That’s 1400 patents from IBM and AOL (via MSFT).

    For those people who used to think that anyone could duplicate Facebook; that’s going to now require some rethinking. Plus, if everyone you know (and a whole lot of “friends” who you don’t really know) are on Facebook, there’s really no easy way to switch. Unless, of course, you have become tired of your old friends and you wanna start over by looking for new ones:-)

    ‘via Blog this’