IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs

theodp writes "IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.' Then there's Big Blue's Electronic Marketplace for Identifying, Assessing, Reserving and Engaging Knowledge-Workers for an Assignment Using Trade-Off Analysis, which provides a handy-dandy IBM calculator that drives home the point that you'll pay less for IGS India workers, whether onshore or offshore. And with its System and Method of Using Speech Recognition at Call Centers to Improve Their Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction, IBM describes how to operate in 'low cost foreign countries' with 'support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them' by exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as other accent reduction techniques."

Re:At least Windows is made in the USA

[similar_name]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/322652_msftvancouver06.html [nwsource.com]
I wouldn't show MS as an example of Made in the USA.
lookup the xbox production sometime too. http://www.google.com/search?q=xbox+production+international [google.com]

Re:Can they do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically, can you patent a business practice, or a business model?

It depends. In the sane world that most people inhabit, no of course you can't. In the US, yes you can.

Re:Go for it

[mikael]

That said, i'm not quite certain how "exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing" can possibly be patented ... i mean could the "usage of wheels to help aeroplanes take off" ever be granted a patent?

Web transcription services for podcasts - you extract the audio channel from a podcast as an MP3 file, upload the file to the transcription services server. The file is chopped up into separate pieces, with each piece transcribed separately. Each piece is re-edited until it is up to scratch. Then the pieces are spliced together with the splices removed. The resulting transcription is returned to the submitter.

It is a complicated process, so it could possibly patented.

Really, it's much like the pre-1950's accounting services in large corporations. Before they had mainframes to do batch processing, they would employ huge halls of clerks to do the accounting manually. Everything was tallied and cross-checked at each stage to make sure

Re:Go for it

[fymidos]

My point was that the technology is already developed, they want to patent a different usage of it....

Re:At least Windows is made in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

H1B's pay taxes just like you do. The problem with outsourcing is that people in other countries pay taxes overseas and not here, which will eventually cause a lot of problems.

Also, H1B's live "here", so their cost of living is comparable to yours, which means they can't settle for a fraction of your salary like an outsourced IT worker will.

IF you're good at what you do, you don't have to fear H1B's. You should however fear outsourcing jobs overseas, which is bad for the economy and workers here.

Just my 2 cents.

You don't need to fight anyone

[Colin Smith]

You (everyone) just have to realise that they stole all your money from you and are now leasing it to you at 5% a year.

Money is power, by allowing them to lend your money to you they have taken all the money and all the power.