IBM has once again has topped the list of annual U.S. patent recipients, receiving 7,355 patents in 2015. This marks 23 straight years that IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other entity, a testament to IBM’s commitment to innovation.
IBM’s 2015 patent haul represents a diverse range of inventions as well as a strong and growing focus on cognitive solutions and the cloud platform as the company positions itself for leadership in a new era of computing. For example, IBM inventors generated more than 2,000 patents in areas related to cognitive computing and the company’s cloud platform.
During our two most recent in-depth looks at IBM’s U.S. patent portfolio (see here and here), we found dozens of patents issued in 2015 relating to patient health…hardly surprising given IBM’s move to deploy its remarkable super-computer known as Watson into the medical field. Watson, which became famous for winning on Jeopardy!, is the first generation omnipotent computer sci-fi fans have dreamed of.
One particular area of IBM innovation relates to the enhancement of patient care through machine learning. Cognitive systems use various algorithms to help generate intelligent insights used to make decisions when analyzing large and disparate data sources. These cognitive systems can be used to help medical professionals identify evidence-based treatment options for their patients. IBM inventors have patented an invention that identifies algorithms based on specific medical categories to help doctors identify personalized treatment options. The patent that covers this innovation is U.S. Patent No. 9,171,478, which is titled Learning model for dynamic component utilization in a question answering system.
IBM also received a patent in 2015 for technology that purportedly helps machines understand emotion. For most of the history of computing, humans have had to play by the machines’ rules —mostly typing or pushing buttons to make ourselves understood. In the cognitive era, machines will increasingly listen and talk to us. A group of scientists from IBM Research’s China lab patented a system that helps machines interpret emotion-laden words so that they can converse with us in more natural ways. U.S. Patent No. 9,117,446, which is titled Method and system for achieving emotional text to speech utilizing emotion tags assigned to text data, is an innovation relates to a method and system for achieving Text to Speech by determining the emotional state of the speaker. In order to accomplish this task, a relationship is established between the emotional state of the speaker and the acoustical features of the speech.
Another example of IBM innovation represented in its 2015 patent portfolio relates to methods for computers learning from humans. Unlike conventional computers, cognitive systems can learn from experience. A team invented technology that helps computers understand language by interacting with humans. The goal is to help computers figure out whether they’re interacting with a human or a machine. The invention then could be used by a website that sells tickets to events, for example, to weed out bots controlled by scalpers. U.S. Patent No. 9,146,917, titled Validating that a user is human, relates a mechanism for generating questions, presenting a question to a user, and using a response from the user to determine if the user is human. The method requires the generation of a first question, identification of any missing information and then the subsequent generation of a natural-language second question to obtain the missing information and evaluate whether the user is really human.
Tags: IBM, IBM Corporation, patent, patents
You share in the PLI Practice Center community, so we just ask that you keep things civil. Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone's sexual orientation or religion. If you can't be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our Terms of Service.