IBM retains patent crown
By Martin LaMonica
CNET News.com
January 12, 2004, 7:12 AM PT
IBM gained more U.S. patents than any other company in 2003, Big Blue announced Monday.

The computing giant said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted it 3,415 patents, marking the 11th consecutive year the company has been the top recipient. IBM said it is the only company to garner more than 3,000 patents in one year, which it has done for the past three years.

In the past 10 years, the company has sought to make its research division more focused on customer requirements, rather than solely research. Today, many patents originate from customer issues, according to IBM.

"What differentiates IBM from other companies is our ability to rapidly apply these inventions to new products and offerings that solve the most pressing business challenges of our clients," Nick Donofrio, IBM senior vice president, said in a statement.

Other tech companies are stepping up their patent efforts as well. Hewlett-Packard announced Monday that it jumped to the No. 5 position on the list of patents awarded in 2003, up from the ninth spot in the preceding year. HP received 1,759 patents last year, a 27 percent increase from 2002, the company said.

To derive more revenue from its growing patent portfolio, HP also said Monday that it has created a unit to handle licensing of its intellectual property. All of the tech giant's intellectual property has been moved into a separate, wholly owned holding company to be managed by the IP licensing organization.

"Over time, we believe that the new IP we are generating will help contribute to top-line and bottom-line growth in both established and emerging markets," Shane Robison, chief strategy and technology officer at HP, said in a statement.

At IBM, software-related patents are on the rise. Of all of Big Blue's patents, more than 1,400 were in software, marking the second year that more than 40 percent of its patents were in software, the company said.

IBM's 2003 patent crop reflects the company's ongoing "autonomic computing" initiative to make computing systems self-managing and more automated. For example, one patent describes a "self healing" server that can detect problems and trends.

Other areas where Big Blue bulked up its patent portfolio include: on-demand computing, an effort to make IT resources available as necessary to handle spikes in usage; pervasive computing, which connects handheld computers and other devices to the Internet; and life sciences, which has seen a large uptick in investments from computing companies.

IBM flaunts its patent portfolio as a measure of the innovation of its engineers and scientists. But the company's current portfolio is not the best indicator of future products due to the pace at which the Patent Office awards patents, said David Kaminsky, master inventor at IBM.

"The patent cycle is slower than the product cycle now within IBM," Kaminsky said. "To see where IBM is innovating today, you have to look at in-progress patents."

Typically, IBM submits an application for a patent during the product development process, and many enhancements are released into products before a patent is granted or rejected, he said.



IBM News Release: Jan 12, 2004

IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record; Tops List for Eleventh Consecutive Year
More than 25,000 IBM innovations patented since 1993

ARMONK, N.Y., January 12, 2004 -- IBM earned 3,415 U.S. patents in 2003, breaking the record for patents received in a single year and extending its run as the world.s most innovative company to eleven consecutive years. Led by growth in patents that fuel the company.s latest on demand computing and services offerings, IBM eclipsed the nearest company by more than 1,400 patents.

During the past eleven years, IBM innovations have generated more than 25,000 U.S. patents -- nearly triple the total of any U.S. IT competitor during this time and surpassing the combined totals for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Intel, Apple, EMC, Accenture and EDS.

IBM is the only company to receive 3,000 patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in a single year, passing that milestone each of the past three years.

"IBM's commitment to research and development has driven more than a decade.s worth of patent leadership and is a major factor in our emergence as the world.s leading IT, services and consulting company,. said Nick Donofrio, IBM senior vice president, technology and manufacturing. .That said, we consider patents little more than a starting point on the path to true innovation. What differentiates IBM from other companies is our ability to rapidly apply these inventions to new products and offerings that solve the most pressing business challenges of our clients."

Innovations Already Driving Business Transformation

IBM is applying thousands of its new patents to accelerate the adoption of on demand computing and to extend the company.s leadership in IT services and consulting. Notable examples from 2003 include:

IBM extended its lead in semiconductor manufacturing techniques and technologies during 2003 with more than 1,200 new patents, including an improved silicon-on-insulator (SOI) chip-making process (Patent 6563173: Silicon-on-insulator chip having an isolation barrier for reliability) and a fundamental nanotechnology breakthrough (Patent 6566665: Method and apparatus for linking and/or patterning self-assembled objects).

The 2003 patent results were reported today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. An agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the USPTO issues patents, administers the patent and trademark laws of the U.S., and advises the administration on intellectual property policy.