IBM still lording it over patents

IBM secured the most US patents last year - something it has done for the past 13 consecutive years.

Big Blue was awarded 3,651 patents in 2006 - a figure which, while not surprising is at least of note in light of various efforts to reform what some say is a flawed system to balance intellectual property (IP) and innovation. Smaller companies eagerly trumpet the award of even a single patent. Meanwhile IBM has shown continued willingness to launch patent infringement lawsuits.

Second place in the patent tally went to Samsung Electronics, with 2,453 patents; followed by Canon with 2,378; Matsushita Electronics with 2,273; HP with 2,113; Intel with 1,962; and Sony with 1,810.

Patents can be a lucrative source of revenue for technology companies that license their IP to others, and can give strategic leverage to competitive negotiations - as in recent deals that Novell and Sun Microsystems signed with rival Microsoft.

But patents can be a pain, too. Amazon.com and IBM are locked in a legal battle about ecommerce patents. A patent infringement suit costs $3m to defend, IP lawyers estimate.

Then there's the open source problem. The collaborative programming community, of which IBM is a significant part, shares technology freely with licensing terms that often are at odds with corporate patent licensing arrangements. IBM has made various attempts to put the open source realm at ease, for example, by sharing some patents with open source projects and pledging to avoid some patent lawsuits.

The latest modest-scale patent reform plan IBM is involved in is an online meeting called the Inventors' Forum where smaller companies or individual inventors can have their say.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com