Some years ago, I worked for Red Hat. I remember them saying the same thing about patents. There was even some kind of reward scheme if you filed one with your name on it.
(in hindsight, I guess I should have held on to those employee stock options!)
Well, there's legal and there's right. They are not not always the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_i...
Based on the above phrase you could almost be forgiven for thinking somethings "patentability" would actually be defined by how engineers typically judged it, rather than how specialist lawyers judge it.
Having some proprietary code doesn't prevent companies from also making substantial contributions to open source in other areas.
Having some proprietary code doesn't prevent companies from also making substantial contributions to open source in other areas.
Not that I'd foresee IBM or any of the real players in the IT space attempting that anymore, I think most realize that alienating the F/OSS community isn't a viable strategy for a software services company in the long term.
Patents are by and large warfare between large companies. They almost never used against open source contributors or small companies unless by patent trolls.
Those aren't opposites, it can be both
However, there are definitely groups inside of IBM that choose to open source their work instead of filing for patents. For example, the team that I'm currently on works on the Carbon Design System [0], which is entirely open source. All the work our team does is out in the open too [1][2], which is great!
I would say that for teams like this, the tendency is to open source software and patent processes that are unique to IBM or a particular domain. That way we can try and contribute back as much useful technology as we can!
Obviously there are others at the company who might have a different perspective, but thankfully we're also trying to spread our own take on alternatives to the traditional processes at IBM.
Hope this info can help make your time at IBM a little bit better!
[0]: https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1]: https://github.com/carbon-design-system [2]: https://github.com/IBM?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=carbon&type=&languag...
Otherwise you may apply for patents in any country that has them. And indeed you need to file in each country where you want protection.
From: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as "computer implemented inventions". "
There's 20,000 hits for a Google patent search for patents assigned to SAP (https://patents.google.com/?assignee=SAP+SE+)
The patent system is broken.
This is simply the inevitable result of western IP law.
> "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
I guess, if you ignore the part where they're one of the biggest corporate contributors to the Linux kernel.
And calling it farming is a bit strange considering you're paid by the company to generate the IP in the first place. Plus they typically compensate you extra for it.
Note that I haven't worked for other giant tech conglomerates, but I haven't experienced it in the other medium - large but not ridiculously large companies which I've worked for.
Do you feel like your company shouldn't make money off the work you do for them? I'm confused by your tone...
The only reason for this is to up their patent arsenal.
Here is a pretty famous story: https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html