Among the patents - many developed in the IBM laboratories in Haifa: voice on the Internet, image recognition for banks and support for computer clusters
Avi Blizovsky
In 2002, IBM registered more patents in the US than any other company. This is the tenth year in a row that IBM leads in patent registration, this time with 3,288 approved patents - compared to only 1,893 for Canon, which is in second place.
The IBM laboratories in Haifa were particularly active this year in registering patents and some of the patents developed outside the US were the result of the work of researchers at the IBM laboratories in Haifa.
The main patents registered this year by IBM scientists in Haifa deal with the transmission of voice over the Internet, a series of image recognition patents that are already used by major banks in the world for handling checks, and a patent for the support of Computer Clusters infrastructure software for Platform iSeries.
Dr. Michael Roda, director of IBM Laboratories in Israel, noted that "technological leadership is conditioned by the ability to innovate, which requires huge investments in research and development. IBM's ability to lead in patent registration for 10 consecutive years expresses IBM's technological power." "The IBM laboratories in Israel have made a great contribution in this field, during 2002 the laboratory personnel in Israel registered about 50 patents" added Dr. Roda.
IBM gives recognition awards to researchers responsible for patents that make up an important percentage of IBM's patent list every year. IBM researchers in Haifa received this badge of honor in the fields of storage, image processing technologies, bar-code handling and the Internet. IBM's global research and development budget is 5.5 billion dollars a year.
In the last decade, inventors belonging to the ranks of IBM all over the world have registered 22,357 patents - compared to nearly 7,000 for Canon, which is in second place. This year, their weight in the list of patents of IBM researchers working in Europe, including in Israel, was higher than before. During this period, IBM received more patents than all the inventions of the ten largest American companies, including HP-Compaq, Intel, Sun, Microsoft, Dell, Apple, EMC, Oracle and EDS. IBM is also the only company to have crossed the 3,000 patent line in one year - and it is doing so for the second time in a row.
Aside from the advantages in terms of the ability to repeatedly bring first-of-its-kind products to the market, IBM's patent portfolio allows the company to generate direct income from the sale of intellectual property rights, amounting to approximately ten billion dollars in the last decade, and approximately $1.5 billion in 2001 alone.
IBM's key inventions in 2002 improve the company's preparation for the era of on-demand electronic business, and widen the technological gap it enjoys in key areas such as autonomous computing in self-managing systems, grid computing in computer networks that allocate computing power to each user as needed, and nanotechnology .
Among these new patents - a system that shares computing tasks over the network, in a technological breakthrough that allows a computer to "call for help" and send tasks or parts of tasks to other computers on the same network. The "assisting" computer will automatically perform the task, and return the result to the computer requesting the service. Another patent, for diagnosing the consequences of the environment on system failures, is an important step towards the availability of self-healing systems. This patent presents a method for self-monitoring of the computer, when the system determines whether the environmental conditions in which it operates cause errors or failures in components such as power supplies or cooling units.
IBM's patent for reconnecting the network allows the computer to automatically diagnose any disconnection from the network - and configure a new connection by itself.
In the field of basic nanotechnology, IBM is establishing its leadership position in what is now perceived as the future chip technology, with a new method for designing and building carbon "nanochips": tiny molecular structures that function as a transistor for everything.
In 2002, IBM scientists also registered a series of patents on technologies capable of improving everyday life, such as a sensor-based system that monitors the mechanical condition of a car and automatically orders required service or repair, such as oil changes or engine tuning.
Recently, IBM established within its research division a new unit for On Demand Innovation Services - On Demand Innovation Services - which directs IBM's most senior scientists to solving the real world problems of the company's customers. IBM also offers its clients a consulting service in the field of patents, which helps in the management and utilization of the patent portfolio of each such client.
Over 950 of IBM's patents have been registered in the field of microelectronics. 335 - in the field of storage, 580 in the field of servers, 470 in the fields of software, 135 in personal computing, and 25 by the services division.
