ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) scientists and researchers received 9,130 U.S. patents in
2020, the most of any company, marking 28 consecutive years of IBM
patent leadership. IBM led the industry in the number of artificial
intelligence (AI), cloud, quantum computing and security-related
patents granted.
"The world needs scientific thinking and action more than ever,"
Darío Gil, SVP and Director of IBM Research
"The world needs scientific thinking and action more than
ever. IBM's sustained commitment to investing in research and
development, both in good and in challenging times, has paved the
way for new products and new frontiers of information technology
that have greatly benefited our clients and society," said Darío
Gil, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research. "The
culture of innovation at IBM is stronger than ever, thanks to our
inventors worldwide who devote themselves to advancing the
boundaries of knowledge in their respective fields every single
day."
IBM led the industry in the number of U.S. patents across key
technology fields:
- Making AI More Intuitive
-
- IBM received more than 2,300 AI patents as inventors developed
new AI technologies to help businesses scale their use of AI.
Patents in this area ranged from technology to make virtual agents
more responsive to emotions when speaking to customers, to AI that
can help people make difficult decisions -- summarizing key
decision points from a variety of information sources, both written
and verbal, and presenting them in easy-to-understand
visualizations. IBM is focused on delivering innovations in natural
language processing, automation and building trust in AI, and
continually infusing new capabilities from IBM Research into our
IBM Watson products. In 2020, this included the IBM Watson team
announcing the first commercialization of capabilities from Project
Debater – a technology that digests massive amounts of text
and constructs a well-structured speech on a given topic and
delivers it with clarity and purpose.
- Streamlining Hybrid Cloud Deployments at the
Edge
-
- IBM received more than 3,000 patents related to cloud and
hybrid cloud technologies. One of the crucial decisions CIOs face
today is determining which data will be processed on premises and
which will be processed in the cloud. IBM inventors developed a
technology to intelligently distribute the data processing
components between the cloud, the edge and computing devices
in-between. It offers the potential to greatly optimize the hybrid
cloud for IoT workloads – such as GPS-generated driving
instructions - that are sensitive to latency. Edge and hybrid
cloud offerings are crucial parts of IBM's product roadmap. In
2020, they included the launch in May
2020 of the IBM Edge Application Manager, an autonomous
management solution to enable AI, analytics and IoT enterprise
workloads to be deployed and remotely managed, delivering real-time
analysis and insight at scale. In addition, in November 2020, IBM announced the IBM Cloud for
Telecommunications to help companies unlock the power of edge and
5G in November 2020. The holistic
hybrid cloud offering leverages IBM's innovative encryption
capabilities, designed to enable mission-critical workloads to be
managed consistently from the network core to the edge, to position
telecom providers to extract more value from their data while they
drive innovation for their customers.
- Laying the Foundation for Powerful Quantum
Applications
-
- Quantum computing is a major focus for IBM and this is
reflected in IBM's leadership in quantum computing patents
obtained. One patent, for example, simplifies the mapping of
quantum molecular simulation on a quantum computer. As a result,
researchers will be able to explore simulating chemical reactions
on quantum computers to understand how and when the discovery
process around new materials and new pharmaceuticals will be
revolutionized. IBM was also granted a patent that sets the
foundation for investigating more accurate and efficient risk
analysis calculations on a quantum computer. These ideas are
already being extended by research done in collaboration with
leading financial institutions.
- Maximizing Security for the World's Most Sensitive
Data
-
- As enterprises work to protect their data, particularly in
highly-regulated industries, IBM inventors received more than
1,400 security-related patents. One of the patents is used for
fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), an IBM-pioneered method of
performing computation on data that remains encrypted while being
processed in order to maximize security for data in use.
Previously, processing encrypted data required decryption before
processing and re-encrypting the results, thus making data more
vulnerable while unencrypted. IBM inventors patented a technique
that allows encrypted data to be organized so that FHE vector
comparison operations can be performed efficiently and maximizes
the security of the data. IBM Security launched a service that
allows companies to experiment with fully homomorphic encryption in
December of 2020.
Patents were awarded to more than 9,000 inventors located in 46
U.S. states and 54 countries. Since 1920, IBM has received more
than 150,000 U.S. patents and played a crucial role in innovations
ranging from magnetic storage to laser eye surgery. IBM's culture
of scientific research is integral to the company's legacy of
innovation that matters to our clients and to the world. To that
end, in April 2020, IBM announced
that it was a founding partner of the Open COVID Pledge, which
grants free access to the patents and patent applications of its
portfolio of more than 80,000 patents worldwide to those developing
technologies to help diagnose, prevent, contain or treat
coronaviruses.
Read more about IBM's patent leadership here.
*2020 patent data is sourced from IFI Claims Patent
Service: http://www.ificlaims.com.
Hugh Collins
IBM Research Communications
hughdcollins@ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM Research