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IBM pulled patent application due to public response |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Sunday, 07 October 2007 |
 IBM was recently found to have filed a patent application for software that helps companies make outsourcing decisions that by walking you through basic business logic. The application was made known to the public which caused a backlash and as a result IBM pulled the patent application.
In the patent application's 'Background of the invention', it states,
Although the concept may seem straight forward, in practice, making the correct
decision on which services to outsource, and which to continue to keep in house
(at a domestic facility), is difficult. At the highest level, to make the
correct decision, all that needs to be done is to determine which services are
at the basic end of the scale and which are at the complex end. If they used the European problem/solution approach to patentability, I might be able to see where they're coming from. There was a problem, it was hard to make a decision and here's a solution. However, what parts of that solution is patentable?
The basics of patentability is that it has to be novel, an inventive step, not obvious, not restricted material and it has to have industrial uses. Putting aside the argument of whether software should be patentable, one would see that this particular 'invention' is not at all novel and seem quite obvious.
The particular invention doesn't even have a novel way of doing things. If you look at claim 1, it states
A computer program product for identifying at least a portion of a
human-resource within an organization for outsourcing, the computer program
product comprising: [JARGON] and identifying tasks based upon the total
aggregate time for outsourcing to a lower cost supplier. So all it does is that it takes the decision process, puts it into a computer, after a bunch of jargon, spews out whether you should outsource a task. My, that is novel and inventive!
You can easily see why there was a backlash over this patent as it seems as though these big corporations are trying to gain a monopoly on everyday business methods. Considering IBM's vocal support for patent reform and for high-quality patents, this patent application didn't help their cause at all. However, what they did in response was great.
IBM VP Bob Sutor announced on his blog that the patent was now in
the public domain. He also admitted that the patent application did not conform to IBM's commitments to patent reform, such as reducing the use of "business
method" patents.
According to his blog,
Here's why we are withdrawing it. IBM adopted a new policy a year
ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress
significant technical content in its patents. Even though the patent application
in question was filed eight months before the policy took effect in September
2006, had the policy been in place at the time, IBM would not have filed the
application. We're glad the community pointed this application out so IBM could
take swift action. IBM handled the situation well and should be comended for their support for a better patent system and patents in the US and by leading by example.
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