Comment by kache_
7 years ago
New IBM hire, software developer. So far; I've taken part of 3 separate events where I was essentially sat through a presentation on why I should file patents (so they could farm IP off of me and my peers). IBM is a pathological company, and definitely not good news for open source.
”sat through a presentation on why I should file patents”
Some years ago, I worked for Red Hat. I remember them saying the same thing about patents. There was even some kind of reward scheme if you filed one with your name on it.
(in hindsight, I guess I should have held on to those employee stock options!)
I've seen RedHat (via JBoss) knowingly patent work they read in a research paper without referencing or funding them. I was positive it was for a reward, as there was no additionally novel ideas in their descriptions and similar work was already open sourced. I knew it wouldn't hold up so it didn't bother me as impacting my projects, but I was disappointed over the ethics of them doing that. I do wonder how many patent rewards are given for someone else's work by farming from the research community.
It's been my experience that engineers are quite poor at judging the "patentability" of ideas. I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that the patent field is quite opaque and difficult to understand, which is why patent lawyers do quite well.
4 replies →
You usually can't hold on to options for longer than three months after you leave a company, right? You'd have had to exercise them.
Right. What I should have said was “should have hung onto the stock that I got from exercising the employee stock options”.
Depends on the company, but this is the status quo in most. Some startups (including ours) now offer 10 years exercise period, but it's not common.
Red Hat does incentivize patent applications, but the purpose has been defensive. The entire process makes that clear as does the licensing.
This is rather normal, not pathological. Most companies like to file patents, definitely including startups. Where do you think their patents come from, if not from work their employees do? It's work that's worth paying for.
Having some proprietary code doesn't prevent companies from also making substantial contributions to open source in other areas.
... yes, but patents are not "proprietary code", in which case granting copyright is enough. If a private company contributes code I think it could even grant the copyright to an open organization, but still decide later to sue if the method/feature/function/etc is patented by them.
Not that I'd foresee IBM or any of the real players in the IT space attempting that anymore, I think most realize that alienating the F/OSS community isn't a viable strategy for a software services company in the long term.
Many companies will license patents to an open organisation as well as indemnify them against patent threats from other companies.
Patents are by and large warfare between large companies. They almost never used against open source contributors or small companies unless by patent trolls.
actually, the normal advice for startups these days is to not file patents. They're expensive and pretty much useless. They used to be worthwhile because investors liked them, but investors aren't so hot on them any more (because expensive and usually indefensible).
> normal, not pathological
Those aren't opposites, it can be both
Have you been enjoying the morale nothings-on-fire-we-swear propoganda all-hands meetings? I was in IBM, software dev, for a year - just left around July. God help your soul.
The joy of working in a large corp. One day it's: boss's boss cares a lot about the work of this team. The next day the whole project gets cancelled. All hands propaganda meetings are so much fun ;-)
Hi there! Fellow IBMer :) sorry to hear about your experience so far, just wanted to chime in and say that you're definitely not alone with this perspective. Patents at IBM are so highly valued that they often act as a blinder towards open source.
However, there are definitely groups inside of IBM that choose to open source their work instead of filing for patents. For example, the team that I'm currently on works on the Carbon Design System [0], which is entirely open source. All the work our team does is out in the open too [1][2], which is great!
I would say that for teams like this, the tendency is to open source software and patent processes that are unique to IBM or a particular domain. That way we can try and contribute back as much useful technology as we can!
Obviously there are others at the company who might have a different perspective, but thankfully we're also trying to spread our own take on alternatives to the traditional processes at IBM.
Hope this info can help make your time at IBM a little bit better!
[0]: https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1]: https://github.com/carbon-design-system [2]: https://github.com/IBM?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=carbon&type=&languag...
I'm in the Linux Technology Centre - we've got an extremely strong open source culture over here.
All major tech companies file patents - shouldn't be surprising that it's going to be part of the job.
Red hat even has like 2000 patents
Not just tech companies. I work at a bank and we've filed a bunch of software/algorithm/tech patents.
I used to write software for print manufacturing. Where the ink meets the paper for books, newspapers, packaging. Our biggest customer was granted multiple patents for our product's core functionality. A full decade after they started using our wares. We had no idea until I was idly researching patents in our field.
The patent system is broken.
How about SAP? Aren't they a European company where software patents have no legal force? Do they fill patents for the US too?
It's not entirely true that in Europe that software patents don't exist.
From: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as "computer implemented inventions". "
There's 20,000 hits for a Google patent search for patents assigned to SAP (https://patents.google.com/?assignee=SAP+SE+)
2 replies →
Europe has software patents but (this was the advice given to me) the bar to obtain one is very high.
Otherwise you may apply for patents in any country that has them. And indeed you need to file in each country where you want protection.
SAP files patents in the US.
All software companies do this. They use patents like cold ware nukes: if you sue us over your patents, we'll sue over ours, and nobody wins.
This is simply the inevitable result of western IP law.
Except IBM is really infamous for using and abusing theirs. Check the Sun story recited in https://www.wired.com/2012/11/the-patent-system-works-fine-b...
> "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
> IBM is a pathological company, and definitely not good news for open source.
I guess, if you ignore the part where they're one of the biggest corporate contributors to the Linux kernel.
Unfortunately, that's going to be the situation at virtually every large tech company these days. To their credit, IBM has been a longtime contributor to Linux so if Red Hat was going to be acquired, IBM is far from a worst-case scenario. It just would have been nice if they could have remained a stand-alone company (I know, wishful thinking)
It's not wishful thinking. RedHat could have remained standalone.
Maybe you are new to the software industry but at every company I've seen e.g. Apple, Google, Microsoft they strongly encourage you to be filing patents.
And calling it farming is a bit strange considering you're paid by the company to generate the IP in the first place. Plus they typically compensate you extra for it.
IBM pushed what I call reckless patenting. They explicitly said, in multiple situations, that even if you think that it's a trivial idea you should attempt to patent it as it will probably get through. Personally, that sentiment goes against my philosophy. I wouldn't regard the monetary benefit to filing a patent through IBM worth the guilt I would accrue.
Note that I haven't worked for other giant tech conglomerates, but I haven't experienced it in the other medium - large but not ridiculously large companies which I've worked for.
Did they give you some of the spiral bound lab notebooks for recording your inventions? Those were the best damn notebooks... :-)
How long have you been in the industry? As far as I understand, that's a pretty standard pitch, though maybe IBM emphasizes it more.
Do you feel like your company shouldn't make money off the work you do for them? I'm confused by your tone...
I am familiar with patent reward systems, but only IBM pushed what I call reckless patenting. They explicitly said, in multiple situations, that even if you think that it's a trivial idea you should attempt to patent it as it will probably get through.
The only reason for this is to up their patent arsenal.
Some companies are better then others. I am confused about why you would ask a question that is intellectually equivalent of "... have you stopped beating your wife.." /S
Did you expect this beforehand? I can imagine they try to show themselves as being innovative and stuff, and only after you join you get the company policy details on stuff like what you just mentioned.
IBM is legendary for monetizing (many/most would say abusing) their patent portfolio. Be hard to miss this when getting hired.
Here is a pretty famous story: https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html