Originally posted by: Adul
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-980262.html?tag=fd_top
IBM will announce on Monday that it was the top recipient of U.S. patents in 2002.
Big Blue was awarded 3,288 patents during the past year, making it the top recipient among private sector companies for the 10th year in a row, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Canon ranked second during in 2002 with 1,893 patents.
IBM has generated just over 22,000 patents during the last 10 years, but those patents have changed with the times, IBM researchers said.
While on the subject of Patents. I was going to post something about this as I saw some disturbing Patent info last week. Just like in Computer crime law needing competent people actually knowing what a real Computer crime is before they decide and no nothing about the technology they think is illegal, the Patent Office apparently has people handing out and deciding on Technology issues and they have no idea what they are looking at. I just read where a guy here in Georgia won a Patent for:
>A Computer cabinet cooling system comprising of an upright tower cabinet having a number of air openings with a fan unit. When the >fan is turned on ambient air is drawn through the air openings to cool the heat producing components in the upright tower cabinet.
The Patent Office just issued this guy a Patent for every PC cabinet in the world! :|
WTH is going on with those idiots. PC cabinets have been around for decades now and they do this???? Nuts, absolutely nuts.
Look it up for yourselves Patent number 6,462,944
There is some more idiot ones:
This guy got a Patent for a light dimmer. #6,472,876
Remember those annoying Commercials for those Antenna strips to put on your Cell phone. They just issued a Patent for that 6,466,171
How bout this one. Redundant systems of all kinds like Power supplies, PC cards, phone system cards etc, have been around forever, right? Well a small group of guys just a Patent for Spare Circuit Switching #6,449,249
These are just a glimpse of future legal battles now where these people and whatever Companies they work for will be claiming they own the rights to, like someone claimed they web links recently. :disgust:
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