Patent, innovation and open platform

In the backdrop of this recent achievement, Dr.Guruduth Banavar, Director, IBM India Research Laboratory, talks to Sudhakaran of CyberMedia News about the company's initiatives to ensure patent quality and plan to help stimulate innovation and economic growth by publishing more technical inventions instead of seeking patent protection.

Could you please give a brief idea about IBM's worldwide patent portfolio?

IBM has earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, becoming the first company ever to earn more than 4,000 U.S. patents in a single year. For the sixteenth consecutive year IBM has led the global patent leadership. IBM's 2008 patent total nearly tripled Hewlett-Packard's and exceeds the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google combined.

How many patents do you have in India?

Sorry, in sync with the IBM's globally integrated collaborative work culture and strongly aligned processes, we don't reveal country specific numbers.

When the number of patent increases, how do you ensure the quality of the patents?

IBM researchers will join a project to develop a 'Patent Quality Index' to address the issue of low-quality patents - those with uncertain scope or dubious claims to scientific progress or technological innovation- whose number has increased substantially in recent years, together with historic backlogs, creating uncertainty around intellectual property rights, and spawning increased speculation and litigation.

IBM researchers will pursue improved patent quality by applying their advanced statistical and data analytics expertise to help create a Patent Quality Index that can help applicants and examiners and the public objectively assess, evaluate and measure the quality of patent applications

What prompted the company to think of developing patent quality assessment software?

IBM's leadership in the strategic use of intellectual property is based on balancing proprietary and open innovation. Our goal is helping stimulate innovation as public investments in large infrastructure projects are being planned to boost global economies.

We also anticipate that adding additional transparency to the patent system will help tackle the continuing patent quality crisis, which is impeding inventors, entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes. The goal of the project is to establish objective metrics associated with patent or patent application quality as measured by validity, not value.

These metrics will help applicants, examiners, and the public objectively assess, evaluate, and measure the quality of issued patents and patent applications to apply advanced statistical and data analytics methodologies from IBM Research to the Patent Quality Index project, to help discover specific attributes of patents that are consistent with accepted measures of patent quality. The goal is to build on the successful academic research at top Universities.

More patent means more research. In this context, could you please give an outline of the strength of IBM's research team and how much does the company spend on research?

Our main differentiators are our rich talent pool and a unique culture of innovation that allows cross-pollination of ideas from a wide array of scientific disciplines and understanding of end-users technology as true collaborators amongst others. It's spectacular, more than 3000 scientists working in close collaboration spread across the IBM's eight world-renowned research Labs. IBM invests about $6 billion per annum in its R&D.

What are the new areas of research at IBM?

IBM's focus on innovation is deep rooted. Innovation is not just essential but imperative to our very existence and growth in the global market place. The current focus areas of the IBM's India Research Laboratory comprise IT-based service delivery research including infrastructure, application, business process services and emerging solutions in telecom and banking such as Mobile Web initiative etc.

These disciplines draw insight from our key technical competencies in computer science, mathematical science and service science. IRL brings to bear our world-class expertise in many areas to address these kinds of real-world problems. Primary among these areas are information and knowledge management, systems management, distributed and high performance computing, software engineering, analytics and optimization and the emerging area of service science.

The lab boasts a rich talent pool in these areas and an enviable culture of innovation. Our ideas typically germinate from the cross-pollination of multiple scientific disciplines and our insight into real-world needs.

How does IBM utilize the licensing income that it generates from its patent portfolio?

IBM's generates approximately $1 billion annually in IP-related income - income from the licensing of patents and other intellectual property, including know-how, trademarks, etc; joint development, particularly around our semiconductor development partnerships, which are built largely from IBM's intellectual property; and from the sale of patents and other intellectual property.

Why IBM is planning to increase the number of technical inventions it publishes annually by 50 per cent?

To help stimulate innovation and economic growth, IBM plans to increase by 50 per cent - to more than 3,000 - the number of technical inventions it publishes annually instead of seeking patent protection. This will make these inventions freely available to others.

We will also contribute the advanced statistical and analytical capabilities of IBM Research to a collaborative project that is developing an empirical measure of patent quality.

Publishing is a way of spurring innovation. By sharing technological inventions with the public at large, development in that area is encouraged so that open platforms can be created upon which higher levels of innovation can take place.

Previous examples of such nontraditional strategic use of IP by IBM includes our pledge not to assert certain software patents against the open source community; and our pledge not to assert any patent against 150 software interoperability standards.

Does that mean in future it would bring down the number of patent applications?

We anticipate that we will be a leader in both publications and patents, and that our combined numbers will demonstrate IBM's technical prowess. IBM has implemented a balanced IP strategy. As the nature of innovation has changed to become more open and collaborative, we have made more of our IP available to others while we continued to be a leader in proprietary innovation.

While we are going to publish more technological advances to protect and enable others to take advantage of the knowledge needed to enable new infrastructure projects, it doesn't mean we are going to innovate any less. However, IBM does not disclose its number of filings; and we cannot predict what the patent office will issue.