[iends]

It's not quite like that, at least in the USA.

For example, my good friend had to submit and modify his idea 3 times because the lawyers were not quite happy with the novelty of it. Documenting your idea is a bit more involved then just slapping a few paragraphs down and sending it off to the legal team.

As an IBMer, I've refused to participate in patents because they are a net negative for society. IBM does however reward you for filing patents.

In the USA, it's like $1000 for your first file and then royalties from the patent in some cases (I've heard 1%, but this is just a rumor) if it is granted. Beyond filing your first patent there are different tiers for the number filed & accepted that provide extra monetary reward.

As far as I am aware, there are no divisions at IBM that just sit around and come up with new patents. Novel ideas come as a product of working on other things, so a team doing nothing but patents would probably quickly run out of inspiration. There are however monthly meetings with "Master Inventors" who have been through the process several times and are willing to help mentor you through the process. As an employee, management regularly has asked (2-3x a year) if anything we've done we thought was patentable.

[tom_b]

My experience at IBM in the US (six years worth) was that management "strongly suggested" patent submissions as part of the review/promotion game.

On one occasion at a meeting of a second-line managers entire org (4 or 5 teams), an employee questioning the utility of making patent submissions a numbers game (e.g, everybody better submit some) was told - with limited paraphrasing - "Hey, 1,000 people on the street want your job and will do the work plus publish technical reports plus submit patents for less money. You should keep that in mind."

I suspect, but didn't really know enough people in other software group divisions to verify, that this particular managerial mindset may have been more tied to our specific division than IBM "in the large."

[mquirion]

Oh yeah. This sounds familiar (6 years at IBM). Very familiar. I wasn't even in the software division. I was in GBS. EVERY thing we did would get discussed and executives would ALWAYS ask if it could be patented. Half the time stupid, normal stuff like making AJAX requests to improve a web page's UX or embedding a browser in some piece of software would be cause for execs to encourage us to try to get a patent for it. It's insane. IBM will one day be the world's largest non-practicing entity.

[bluedevil2k]

As an ex-IBM'er who is a Master Inventor (36 patents), there are no royalties offered ever for any patent submissions. They grant you $750 per patent, with a bonus of $1500 on your first patent and $1500 every additional 3 patents.

[mjn]

My 2nd-hand (but family) knowledge about the energy business is that there're no royalties for patents there either. You get paid anywhere from $10 (really) to a few $hundred for a successful patent filing. My impression is that the aversion to royalties isn't mainly worry about the amount of royalty payments (them not wanting to give you 1% of something that turns into a blockbuster patent), but more that they don't want to deal with the legal complications that could result from not owning their patent portfolio free & clear.

Particularly the case since it's patent portfolios that are valuable more than individual patents. If they had a regular policy of small-percentage royalty share, a company could well end up with a portfolio of 10,000 patents that has maybe 15,000 or 20,000 royalty-share agreements attached to it. That would be hugely more risky to manage than just 10,000 patents owned by the company with no riders attached. For example, say the company wants to sell this portfolio. A sale of the portfolio could potentially be held up by any of those 15,000+ people objecting that the terms prejudice their contractual agreement to a share of revenue. A share of a patent's revenues is a valuable quasi-ownership interest guaranteed by some contract terms, so any sales or other dealings that might impact it could be challenged by the contract holder. Even if any challenge is ultimately unsuccessful, having your portfolio encumbered by tens of thousands of people with some kind of claim on it is undesirable.

[enscr]

It's the same story in US too. Many startups are desperate to build a patent portfolio. Those who can afford the lawyer fee, throw out big incentives to employees to patent left & right. Much of the stuff is crass. After a while I started hating the patent process at my work places (respected, popular companies).

[mrschwabe]

Interesting. So they do have a reward system built in for employees as incentive to submit these 'drafts'. In addition to management routinely asking/encouraging this practice. Not surprising I guess, but nice to bring some specific details to light. Good on you.