IBM marks sixteen years of patent leadership

For the sixteenth consecutive year, IBM is the Number One patent holder in the United States.

The United States Patent Office granted 4,186 patents to IBM in 2008, nearly triple the number Hewlett Packard (HP) received, and exceeding the total combined number of patents for Microsoft (2,030), HP (1,424), Apple (186), EMC (192), Accenture (68) and Google (58). With 3,515 patents, Samsung came in second, followed by Canon in third place with 2,114 (see chart, below).

IBM also announced plans to increase by 50 percent the number of inventions and technical contributions it publishes to external outlets, such as ip.com. Publishing will make them more freely available to inventors, and in conjunction with programs such as Peer to Patent, will help examiners ensure that patents are not granted for questionable or previously disclosed inventions.

Open innovation
To help drive open source adoption around the world, IBM made an unprecedented 500 software patents available to the open source community and pledged not to sue for patent infringement. IBM applied the same pledge for new open standards-based projects in healthcare, education, the environment and software interoperability.

IBM is also taking aim at promoting patent quality. IBM researchers will join the Patent Quality Index, a project spearheaded by IBM, Columbia University and Tokyo University. By applying its expertise in advanced statistical and data analytics, the joint project will create a Patent Quality Index that can help applicants, examiners and the public actively -- and objectively -- participate in assessing, evaluating and measuring the quality of patent applications and issued patents.

Richard Lawrence, manager of predictive modeling for IBM Research, leads the IBM team that is developing the index. Says Lawrence, "By working with the academic and legal communities on this and other patent quality initiatives, we can increase the intelligence of the patent system and encourage the pursuit of new innovations."

Read the press release.

Last updated on January 20, 2009