Thursday, November 02, 2006

ITMB lecture Nov 7th 16.45 - 18.00 in 1N5

The third lecture in this sequence is to be given by Amanda Chessell of IBM. Mandy is the joint holder of some 15 patents and active in the professional community.

"Mandy Chessell, FREng CEng FBCS has worked for IBM since 1987. She is a Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM), Master Inventor and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Currently, she is the chief architect for IBM's Enterprise Master Data Solutions."

IBM's position on patents is an interesting topic. According to their web site, IBM for the 13th consecutive year have been awarded more patents than any other company (2,974 in 2005). It has a portfolio of some 23,000 patents from which it earnt some $1 billion from licenses on these patents - but spent $7 billion on reseach (and an estimated $10,000 onlegal fees per patent) . Some are released for general use since IBM recogises the need for open systems. However it also owns some extemely broad patents and is currently agressively pursuing Amazon Some see this as Amazon's come-upance since Amazon itself has very agressive over its one-click patent. Others see this as the exposure of the problem of software patenting generally. Taken at face value, it would appear that IBM patents apply to every E-Commerce site in the world - for example - US 7,072,849 - Presenting Advertising in an Interactive Service.

No comments: