IBM Tops 2018 Patent List as AI and Quantum Computing Gain Prominence

IBM earned a record 9,100 U.S. patents in 2018, marking the 26th year in a row the Armonk, New York-based company has been the top recipient. From a report: Samsung was second with 5,850 patents while tech giants Apple and Microsoft also appeared in the top ten, according to a list compiled by research service IFI Claims. IBM's latest patent haul, which topped the 9,043 it received last year, includes a growing number of inventions related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which many people see as critical technologies of the future.

"earned"

[110010001000]

You mean "paid for". At this point, patents mean nothing except you paid the fee.

Re:

[jellomizer]

Well you need to pay for it first.

Re:"earned"

[ClickOnThis]

I'm guessing you never wrote a patent before. I have. So have several family members. It's work. Believe me, once it's granted, you feel like you earned it.

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[110010001000]

There isn't AI either, but that doesn't stop them from filing "patents" on it. IBM is a failed business.

How exactly does...

[TheZeitgeist]

...IBM make a living these days? They don't sell computers, matter of fact they don't seem to sell "Business Machines" at all that I know about. So I watch their commercials sometimes, but that doesn't help - I just learn that Watson apparently is the answer for how anodyne politically-correct worlds get smarter supply chains for lattes or something. Does IBM send an invoice after Watson makes me "smarter?" How do they get money? Who pays them? I don't know anymore.

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[laffer1]

They own cloud computing infrastructure that competes with AWS. They own redhat. They do consulting. They just sold lotus.

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[Anonymous Coward]

IBM bills other large incompetent companies and governments.

So they are funded by taxpayers.

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[bws111]

As to 'business machines', they sell zSeries (mainframes), pSeries (UNIX servers), and storage.

Re:

[Njovich]

They may not sell you a laptop, but they provide entire IT infrastructures, major applications and large scale IT consulting to organizations like banks, government agencies, etc.

HMMMM

[WolfgangVL]

A single entity can receive 25 patents a day... for a year.

It seems like there should be at least a 24 hour cooldown before your next submittal.

Or a patent tax?

I don't know, but 9100/year seems excessive.

Re:

[WolfgangVL]

Why should they be limited?

This is an excellent question.

I own no patents of my own, but I have been instrumental in the R&D process that led to more than one in the course of my job-duties. I'm also very critical of our (as in US) IP laws in general, and am still pretty unhappy about the state of affairs regarding the ever increasing barrier of entry regarding bringing novel inventions to market, creation and decimation of intellectual property, and the existence of patent and copyright trolls. Maybe I'm just a tech guy with an