IBM earned most US patents for 13th year

Philipp Gollner

SAN FRANCISCO: IBM, the world's biggest computer services company, said on Monday it led the list of US patent holders for a 13th straight year, with 1,100 more patents than any other company.

International Business Machines Corp. in 2005 earned 2,941 patents, the eighth year in row that it received more than 2,000 patents, according to an IBM statement. The United States Patent and Trademark Office is scheduled to report patents issued in 2005 on Tuesday.

IBM's patents included intellectual property rights related to its main businesses: computer systems and storage, microprocessors and semiconductor manufacturing techniques, software and computer services, said David Kappos, an IBM vice president and assistant general counsel.

IBM also said it is working with the U.S. patent office and other entities to make it easier for examiners to review computer-related patent applications. The aim is to ensure that examiners don't inadvertently issue patents for software code that has already been developed, Kappos said in an interview.

The project, which also involves academic institutions and the so-called Open Source Development Labs, will allow patent examiners and others to quickly search through millions of lines of existing software code to determine whether patents are being sought for prior inventions.

Open Source Development Labs, which promotes the use of a software called Linux, whose code is shared freely among developers.

Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and can result in lengthy, potentially crippling litigation. Patent holding company NTP Inc. is pursuing an injunction against Research in Motion Ltd. to shut down the company's popular Blackberry service in the United States.

"We obviously can't make all of the world's proprietary code publicly available," Kappos said. "What we can do is make that code that is already open-source format publicly searchable."

The process should lead to fewer copyright disputes and lawsuits, Kappos added. "The quality will increase for everyone," he said. "It leads to fewer disputes in the system. That's better for business."