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Comment by chris_mc | Hacker News Reader

If I were the CEO of IBM, I'd wonder what jagoff spent 10 grand (average patent cost, with lawyers and other services) to make a coffee drone joke.

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Someone who gets a bonus for each patent successfully filed.

Yup, IBM begs employees to patent anything they can. They have entire patent groups to steward unfamiliar employees along the path, and they'll have presentations reminding employees about bonuses they get for successful filings and to try to get anything through because it's harmless to try.

Most people might say this is the defensive patent mindset we live in these days (IBM is not extremely offensive), but one wonders whether this deluge upon the USPTO exacerbates the problem. Granted it could be argued that unreasonable patents would be approved regardless of volume.

This was my exact thought -- I'm stunned by how earnest the comments are here when my troll-dar is going off heavily right now. I guess I should be glad they didn't find some harebrained way to include the blockchain. There's nothing wrong with drone delivery, but the "innovation" of trying to address a people ops problem with coffee is so woefully wrongheaded that it really begs the question of whether it was intended seriously.

"System 100 can utilize monetary or digital currency bids, but can also enable the trading of coffee drinks." -pg.13

I mean, there is a f'n drawing of it lowering coffee with a string. That's clearly satire.

It got an article written about it, and we're here talking about it, so it may even have been a PR stunt (and of course, IBM does heavily encourage their employees to patent anything they can)

IBM is a law firm these days

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