IBM tops patent leadership in 2008 too

IBM today announced that it shattered the patent record in 2008, becoming the first company to surpass 4,000 patents in a single year. It is the sixteenth consecutive year that IBM has led the global patent leadership. IBM’s 2008 patent total nearly tripled Hewlett-Packard’s and exceeds the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google combined.

Guruduth Banavar, director, IBM India Research Laboratory, said: “To help stimulate innovation and economic growth, IBM plans to increase by 50 per cent, to more than 3,000, the number of technical inventions it publishes annually instead of seeking patent protection”. He, however, highlighted IBM’s pledge not to assert certain software patents against the open source community; and not to assert any patent against 150 software interoperability standards.

IBM generates approximately $1 billion annually in IP-related income — income from the licensing of patents and other intellectual property, including know-how, trademarks, etc; joint development, particularly around our semiconductor development partnerships, which are built largely from IBM’s intellectual property; and from the sale of patents and other intellectual property.