IBM Eye

Announcement from IBM introducing initiatives for improved patent quality.

IBM Leads in U.S. Patents for Thirteenth Consecutive Year

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today released its annual list of the top patentees. With 2,941, IBM earned more U.S. patents than any other company for the thirteenth consecutive year.

IBM also announced an initiative it is undertaking with the USPTO, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), members of the open source software community and academia that is focused on improving U.S. patent quality. The unprecedented partnership between these parties to improve patent quality will help accelerate innovation in the United States.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger (as usual), has some excellent insight into this effort: Improving Patent Quality as a Community

Patents are intended to encourage the disclosure of inventions to the public by granting the inventor exclusive rights to benefit from his or her invention for a limited period. This helps promote innovation, because an idea or invention can have many potential benefits beyond those originally imagined by its creator. In an increasingly collaborative, interconnected global economy, there is a compelling and growing societal interest in bringing new intellectual property to the marketplace as soon as possible and maximizing the overall amount and quality of innovation.

However, if the quality of the invention covered in patents is low — that is to say, neither significant nor new — then such patents actually undermine the common good, thwart the very innovation they were intended to foster and, collectively may seriously erode trust in our IP laws and institutions. That is why significantly improving the quality of patents is such a high priority for us all, and why improving patent quality is the focus of the initiatives we are announcing this week.

Bob Sutor also comments on the news, and provides links to some articles and blog entries about the press release, some of which also offer interesting analysis of the announcment: New patent initiative to increase quality, certainty.