IBM gets most patents with India’s help

India is now the second-largest contributor in the world, after the US, helping tech giant IBM to hit a new patent milestone. IBM inventors received a record 9,262 US patents in 2019. 900 of these were from India.

IBM led the patents race for 27th year in a row across the key technology areas like Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud computing, quantum computing, and security.

Some of the Indian patents were on infrastructure costs and benefits tracking, automation, and validation of insurance claims for infrastructure risks and failures in multi-processor computing environments and eye contact-based information transfer.

“Technology advances - whether AI, cloud or quantum computing - will all contribute to solving the biggest challenges facing business and society,” said Dr. John E. Kelly III, executive vice president, IBM adding “we are very proud of the talented individuals across IBM who change the world through their inventions”.

IBM got 1800 patents in AI alone. It also led in the number of blockchain patents granted, which includes several patents for improving the security of blockchain networks. More than 2,500 patents were given in cloud technology, including for example a patent for a method to jointly manage cloud and non-cloud computing platforms.

IBM has received more than 140,000 US patents in over 100 years.

This year, more than 8,500 IBM inventors, spanning 45 different US states and 54 countries contributed to the patents.