Litigation is a last resort, but we’re prepared: IBM

Litigation is a last resort for technology company IBM, but that doesn’t mean it’s unprepared to fight for its patents and other intellectual property.

This is the opinion of Manny Schecter, chief patent counsel at the company, speaking to WIPR.

“Relative to other companies in our industry, we are not involved in that much patent litigation,” explained Schecter.

“However, we do bring litigation against others that take our IP and refuse to compensate us.  Fortunately, this does not occur very frequently. Litigation is not our preferred mode of enforcing IP,” he said.

IBM has a lot of IP. In 2015, it received the most US patents of any company (7,355 patents), keeping it top of the leader board for the 23rd year in a row.

“We consider ourselves an innovation company,” said Schecter. “If you look at IBM’s history, we started out over 100 years ago selling clocks and scales.”

The company successfully navigated the early days of the computer business before becoming the global operator it is today.

“Billions and billions of dollars has been spent on research and development to maintain that innovation edge,” he said.

Schecter added: “IBM is such a prolific filer of patents because we are constantly innovating. The patent system has served us well: helping to protect the innovations we create and to defend ourselves from others.”

To find out more about Schecter’s thoughts on Alice v CLS Bank, IP challenges the company must overcome, and licensing from ‘patent trolls’, be sure to read the WIPR January/February 2017 publication, where the full interview with Schecter will be featured.