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On the same day recently that IBM announced it had received the most U.S. patents for the 27th consecutive year, our company made a second announcement that could prove nearly as significant for the future of patents and innovation.
We disclosed that we had joined the LOT Network. LOT is a group of more than 600 member companies and organizations that believe the patent process is integral to the ongoing protection and stimulation of innovation and invention. LOT members also believe the patent system is too valuable a system to let it be abused by those seeking to make money by filing frivolous patent lawsuits.
Joining LOT is a momentous decision for IBM. We’re one of the largest patent holders in the world. Over the years, our scientists have won five Nobel Prizes for their research breakthroughs. And IBM continues to be one of the biggest corporate investors in original research by prolific inventors working in a broad range of technologies.
Last year alone, IBM researchers secured a record 9,262 new U.S. patents, including thousands of patents in cutting-edge technical fields like cloud computing, AI, network security, quantum computing and blockchain. In other words, IBM sees significant business value in sponsoring research and protecting our best ideas with patents that in many cases will lead to commercial products and services.
Since its first patent, awarded in 1911, IBM has become a global leader in patenting inventions.
IBMAnd yet, by joining the LOT Network, we have agreed that IBM patents and patent applications can never be used in a lawsuit against another LOT member by parties known as patent assertion entities (PAEs). If a PAE ever owns any one of IBM’s more than 80,000 patent assets, before the PAE can wield that patent in an infringement lawsuit, each member of the LOT Network will receive a license to that asset from IBM. All LOT members make this same commitment, thereby establishing a patent protection umbrella from PAE lawsuits for all LOT members.
Why is IBM, one of the largest holders of intellectual property rights, willing to share its patent protection umbrella with hundreds of other companies? We’re doing it to protect the patent system from abuse.
Protection From the Patent Privateers
Think of certain PAEs as the privateers of the information technology era. They’re typically not inventors themselves. Instead, some PAEs navigate the digital seas to acquire patent rights in order to extort payments from supposed infringers.
The LOT Network offers a sort of mutual nonaggression pact. When joining LOT, a company agrees to provide a license to the network's members that protects them from litigation if the company's patents fall into the hands of a PAE. This pact acts as a strong deterrent against specious patent infringement lawsuits. What's more, LOT produces a network benefit. As more companies join the pact, there is an expanding shield of protection from PAE infringement claims.
Joining the LOT Network demonstrates IBM’s dedication to open innovation, intellectual property and, more broadly, the responsible stewardship of technology. We recognize the value of open innovation that encourages an expanding global IT ecosystem—an open system where everyone can enjoy the network effects of products and services that can easily interconnect and interoperate.
The Value of Shared Innovation
Without that open ecosystem, we cannot have the global system of communication, collaboration and digital commerce on which 21st-century business and society depend. Red Hat, the open-source exemplar that IBM acquired last year, was a founding member of the LOT Network in 2014.
In another move to support open innovation and establish reasonable and appropriate limits on intellectual property (IP) rights, IBM has filed an amicus brief—a friend-of-the-court brief—with the U.S. Supreme Court in one of the most significant technology copyright cases in decades. Like many other technology companies watching that case, IBM opposes using copyright protection to impede the use of open interfaces that enable compatibility between software programs and digital devices of all sorts.
IBM believes that we need to foster an environment in which openly available interfaces can continue to be used to fuel the research and innovation that has reshaped our world. As IBM’s long history as a technology innovator has demonstrated, IP protection can and does encourage invention and reward inventors.
