/. "IBM Wants To Patent Restaurant Waits"
/. reports another trivial IBM patent:-
"If all goes IBM's way, it'll soon constitute patent infringement if Bennigan's gives you a free lunch for being inconvenienced by a long wait for your meal. Big Blue is seeking a patent for its Method and Structure for Automated Crediting to Customers for Waiting, the purported 'invention' of three IBM researchers, which IBM notes, 'could be implemented completely devoid of computerization or automation of any kind.' Can we count on IBM to withdraw this patent claim, or will Big Blue weasel out of its patent reform pledge again?" Another trivial IBM business process patent.
The links are worth looking at, especially "IBM aims to patent its patent system". My personal favourite remains IBM's famous toilet queue patent:-
Joking aside, whilst IBM trumpets its success securing patents (3,148 in 2007, and beating all other competitors for the 15th consecutive year c/w 1,637 from Microsoft) it's "Quality—not quantity—counts when it comes to patent portfolios" to quote the IEEE Spectrum when introducing the first of its annual patent surveys in 2006.
The survey was conducted for Spectrum by 1790 Analytics, a research firm which specialises is analysing patent citations (the name apparently comes from the fact that 1790 was the year in which the first U.S. patent was issued, to Samuel Hopkins for a method of making potash). To determine the overall strength of a company's portfolio 1790 analytics looked at patented innovations that frequently led to further innovations, both inside and outside of the patentee.
The results in 2006 (for patents filed in 2005) were
and in 2007 (for patents filed in 2006) the results were
Pulling out IBM and Microsoft shows the relative size and quality of their respective portfolios like this
Which we can use to look at the "pipeline power" per patent, a quality index of sorts
The results speak for themselves - but don't show what lies behind. My guess is that it's business process patents, trivial or otherwise, that are behind the apparent weakness in IBM's showing. This isn't an issue I've seen IBM speak to, but I'd be interested if anyone else has.