IBM world's most inventive company

MANILA, Philippines - IBM announced that its inventors received a record 5,896 US patents in 2010, marking the 18th consecutive year it topped the list of the world’s most inventive companies.

IBM became the first company to be granted as many as 5,000 US patents in a single year. It took IBM’s inventors more than 50 years to receive their first 5,000 patents after the company was established in 1911.

IBM received patents for a range of inventions in 2010, such as a method for gathering, analyzing, and processing patient information from multiple data sources to provide more effective diagnoses of medical conditions; a system for predicting traffic conditions based on information exchanged over short-range wireless communications; a technique that analyzes data from sensors in computer hard drives to enable faster emergency response in the event of earthquakes and other disasters; and a technology advancement for enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light instead of electrical signals, which can deliver increased performance of computing systems.

More than 7,000 IBM inventors residing in 46 US states and 29 countries generated the company’s record-breaking 2010 patent tally.

Inventors residing outside the US contributed to more than 22 percent of the company’s patents in 2010, representing a 27 percent increase over international inventor contributions during the last three years.

IBM’s 2010 patent total has exceeded the issuances of its major competitors combined.

Patent leaders

The top US patent leaders in 2010, based on data provided by the IFI Claims Patent Services, were: IBM, 5,896; Samsung, 4,551; Microsoft, 3,094; Canon, 2,552; Panasonic, 2,482; Toshiba, 2,246; Sony, 2,150; Intel, 1,653; LG Electronics, 1,490; and HP, 1,480.

“Patents, and the inventions they represent, reflect the commitment to innovation that has differentiated IBM and IBMers for a century now. This patent leadership is a great way to kick off our 100 years of providing innovation that truly matters to the world,” said Lope Doromal, chief technologist of IBM Philippines.

“It is also an important element of our high-value business strategy of making the world work better, focused on enabling instrumented, interconnected, intelligent infrastructure that can change how systems of all kinds work to support a smarter planet,” Doromal added.

IBM’s inventiveness stems from the company’s long-term commitment to development and bold, exploratory research. IBM spends approximately $6 billion in R&D annually.

IBM centennial

This year marks IBM’s centennial, and from the first patent IBM received in 1911 for an invention related to punched card tabulation - to patents its inventors received in 2010 for analytics, core computing and software technologies, and smart utilities, traffic systems, and healthcare systems - the company has consistently pursued a balanced and versatile intellectual property strategy that can translate into real-world solutions, and make systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and more responsive.

Among the interesting and important inventions from IBM’s 2010 patent total include:

• US Patent # 7,761,440: Methods, systems and computer program products for synthesizing diagnoses in health care databases. This patented invention enables improved analysis of health care data, which can enable a smarter healthcare system.

• US Patent # 7,760,112: System and method based on short-range wireless communications for notifying drivers of abnormal road traffic conditions. This invention predicts traffic conditions based on traffic information exchanged - via short-range wireless communications - between vehicles.

• US Patent # 7,693,663: System and method for detection of earthquakes and tsunamis, and interface to warning systems. The patent describes a technique that gathers and analyzes data from computer hard drive sensors to accurately and precisely conduct post-event analysis of seismic events, such as earthquakes, which can lead to more efficient emergency response needed following a natural disaster.

• US Patent # 7,790,495: Optoelectronic device with germanium photodetector.