No idea how valuable or inovative any of these patents are, but I think its important to note when discussing: "They're never going to look like they're on the cutting edge of some space"
I've worked with former IBM people - all (or some it seems) of them have a plaque of whatever their first patent was. When they talk about it they admit it was a trivial invention that is too specific to be of much use outside the one project (thus there is no value in keeping it from competitors). IBM encourages patenting everything and has people looking for things to patent. Most other companies only patent things that are unique and worth the costs. (keeping from competitors, licensing to competitors, or keeping competitors from patenting it and stopping your use)
They spent 6 Billion Dollars on research that year (late 90s)
But Its true, IBM Values patents quite heavily. You can see some of them they printed as wall paper in the lobby (Along with mechanical calculators and models of some of daVinci's machines.)
But they also have "Trade Secrets" which are things they think they're competitors won't figure out and if you don't patent it you aren't telling the world how its done. I think some of the chip chemicals and processes for working with silicon wafers were to be classified as such.
They seemed always to be pushing the researchers to make something they could sell..
As an aside, IBM Yorktown is an oddly round building..
https://www.google.com/maps/place/IBM+Thomas+J.+Watson+Resea...
They sold off their chip foundries and all IP to GloFo a half decade ago (and since then GloFlo has stopped all non sustaining R&D).
The arc-shape building reminded me Apple Park in Cupertino, except TJ Watson center was built decades earlier.
I like that the hallway was on the outside and hallways radiated out (and everyone had offices with frosted glass). It was a pain running pipes though as standard bend didn't quite work for that radius.
https://picryl.com/media/ibm-thomas-j-watson-research-center...
https://picryl.com/media/ibm-thomas-j-watson-research-center...
The library was a trip too. It was like what they thought the future of furniture was in the the 1960s. It was all in excellent shape.
I just finished (a light) editing of an English (machine translated) version of a book for someone I have a lot of respect for who is a Japan-based mentor of mine - Hiroshi Maruyama had 26 years in IBM research, eventually as the director of IBM Tokyo Research Labs.
In one chapter of the book he provides a view across a possible way to fix the patent system which I found interesting. It referenced ideas from the following paper - https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/S376023B46442F89/building_a_ne...
Some of the key points of the IP marketplace were - fees for the licensee fee would be set upfront; - the patentee would pay a % value to the government as a tax; - if the patentee wanted to use the patent exclusively, a high licensing fee could be set, but that would also result in a higher tax being due to be paid.
The approach was to dis-incentivize bad actors putting monopolies on products via patents. It would also encourage higher utility value from patents under this system.
Another interesting concept Maruyama's book covered was LOT networks used to fight against Trolls. - https://lotnet.com/
The idea with the Lot network was that if a patent did get rights to a patent from a member of the lot network, If any of the patents from members falls into the hands of a patent troll, all other members are automatically granted a free license of the patent.
The book covers themes on how to do research in corporate organizations (the audience focus remains with Japanese researchers/students) and has some interesting discussions.
I will provide a link to the book when it is available (if there is interest).
The book is an updated version of this Japanese book: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4764903822/ref=dbs_a_def...
First 5 low fees. Next 5 (10%) increased fees, repeat.
This prevents one company from amassing too many.
Also there should be some additional value to people not just companies for the government to be granting legal monopolies, and it should also be restricted to things that are actually implementable not extremely vague system level diagrams.
"On June 19, 2014 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International that 'merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_...
He had a 6' tall metal filing cabinet full of lucite plaques.
In the farthest corner of the garage. It was all binned later that day.
Top patenters of 2017:
IBM
Samsung
LG
Intel
Canon(!)
Alphabet
Qualcomm (!)
Toyota
Microsoft
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (fab for AMD and other chip designs)
Companies I've worked for have teams that facilitate employee patent submissions, and they will tell you why patenting is important to the company. They have had some kind of bonus structure so that you get rewarded if you submit a successful patent. But they pay well enough otherwise that, unless you're personally motivated to see your name attached to patents, it's just not worth the effort.
To put this another way: the patents you author as an employee of a company are probably not that valuable to you. But, because of the potential legal protections they offer, they are very valuable to your employer. I think the companies that are more successful in having high patent counts are doing more to align employee interest with corporate interest w/r/t patents.
In short, there's incentive as well as assistance in filling up patents, they don't seem to discriminate on basis of usability, feasibility or anything else. They do give bigger bonuses for patents that are in one of the fields considered strategic for the company.
Listening to it was somewhere between amusing to depressing:
https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/086-invention-ibm-isti...