IDEAS from IBM transcript

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1 14 January 2008 Podcast interview with Dave Kappos Intellectual property to help the planet Hi, this is Bob Sutor, IBM s Vice President for Open Source and Standards. And I m here today with Dave Kappos. Dave is IBM Vice President and Assistant General Counsel on Intellectual Property Law. Well, David, it s January, and that means some sort of patent announcement involving IBM. And I think we have something really special this year to announce. It s called the Eco Patent Commons. Can you talk a little bit about what this is, and how it s going to work? Sure. Thanks, Bob. Well, the Eco Patent Commons is essentially the intersection point between ecology and technology. And what we ve done with the Eco Patent Commons is work together with a number of partners Nokia, and Sony, and Pitney Bowes, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and put together a pledge of a number of patents that can be used beneficially for ecology, that can benefit the environment. And the concept behind us doing that is to step forward and create a new way for companies, individuals across many industries and across the globe, frankly, to work together in order to make their innovations that benefit the ecology, the environment, available to large numbers of people, to large numbers of companies, in order to create further innovation and to set an agenda that puts the environment first. 1

2 So we particularly feel it s important to share these patents -- that is, not keep them to ourselves when it comes to the environment? Well, that s right, Bob. Many technologies that have an environmentally beneficial impact also have cross industry implications. Examples are technologies like packaging technologies that can be used in the information technology industry but also in many other industries. If those technologies involve non toxic packaging, if they involve simpler packaging, if they involve packaging that uses less resources to create and recycle, they can be very beneficial to the ecology of the globe. Over the last few years IBM has done some opening up here, as has the industry. For example, three years ago we gave 500 patents to Open Source, we ve made pledges for healthcare and education. And last year in fact we pledged a lot of patents for standards for the Web and for the Internet. But it s still a relatively new concept. Why are people really sharing like this? There s a recognition that intellectual property which is inherently property that s owned by a party is taking on an importance that goes beyond affecting an individual party or even an individual industry. And that recognition then leads to the need to not just hoard or reserve for one s self all of one s intellectual property but to find opportunities to share it in order to benefit a larger purpose in this case, ecology. And we re seeing that more and more. As you pointed out, we initiated the concept of a pledge back in 2005 I believe it is, and IBM has undertaken a number of pledges since then in industries and for purposes where we felt there was a significant social global benefit that offset what otherwise would be the business purpose in holding that intellectual property and reserving it for a single party. So as you mentioned, education, healthcare, open standards and Open Source related development are areas that we felt were very important that had global impact, that had a special dynamic where sharing of the intellectual property could create a new paradigm, a new basis for further development and further innovation. And that s why we decided to take the initiative to undertake those pledges in those various areas. 2

3 Now, this said, is IBM really just doing this from a philanthropic basis? Are we all just a lot of really nice people, and we want to do this? That is, let me say from a business perspective, are there potential benefits to IBM as well? Right. And yes, there are. While there are important benefits that go across society that make this kind of move important for the communities that we serve, the communities that we live in, there also is an important business rationale. And that is that by opening up our patent portfolio we ve found already from our previous pledges in the Open Source area in healthcare open standards, education, we create new opportunities for business growth in effect, raising the tide for all of the business environment creating new business opportunities, new standards, new product spaces, new services spaces. And of course, IBM benefits from those. Yes, with some of the previous things we ve done around patents and sharing, one of the most common questions I get is, where did the idea come from? With the Eco Patent Commons, what was the genesis? The genesis was really starting from an event that we have called the GIO the Global Innovation Outlook in which IBM calls together thought leaders from around the world: customers, governments, university professors, the major thinkers around innovation, and asks them questions regarding the future of innovation, looking out way over the horizon on a five and 10 year kind of a timeframe. And asks them what the major problems will be, and how innovation needs to and can address those problems. And out of that discussion at one of our GIOs came the challenges we d be facing with the environment in an era where there s increasingly consciousness of an obvious consciousness of the effect that the human race is having on the environment......the need to have a more sustainable approach to development, but also the challenge of doing that and the requirement that such a new environmental consciousness be technology driven and technology based. And that then led to the discussion about the role that intellectual 3

4 property would play, since increasingly in our hyper competitive world technology is protected by intellectual property; any time you talk about deploying technology you talk about rights in intellectual property. And so the discussion went, if technology is to be employed effectively to address the environmental concerns we have on a global basis, won t owners of intellectual property across diverse industries that aren t used to working together, won t those owners need to find new ways to work together? Won t they need to overcome their instinct to individually exploit their intellectual property and to exclude others? And, won t they need to learn how to share it? And so from the Global Innovation Outlook and the recognition through that discussion that there was an oncoming collision point, if you will, between environmental innovation fueled by 21st century technology, colliding with the intellectual property protection regime that s really not well suited to sharing intellectual property... From that recognition came the idea of creating a new commons that would reduce that intellectual property stress and instead make intellectual property a vehicle for sharing environmentally friendly innovations. So this is about sharing, it s about collaboration and it s about doing this in a very important area. Now, IBM is many things, and I hope from today s announcement people can see that. We re a technology company in part, and a lot of what we do is based on our innovation. I believe we also have another announcement related to innovation and patents today. Could you take us through that? You know, IBM is a leader in the creation of technology. We invest many billions of dollars every year in research and development, and of course we secure patent protection on those innovations. We re very proud that today we ve been announced by IFI as the leader in US patent output for the 15th consecutive year, which is a feat that no other company has ever achieved or come close to. In 2007, we issued well over 3,000 patents. I believe we re still the only company that s ever issued over 3,000 patents, and we re very happy to have achieved that again for the 15th consecutive year. 4

5 Well, thank you, Dave. Two very important announcements today, and I think the Eco Patent Commons in particular is going to have a major impact both in the way people think about patents and the way people think about collaboration. And we hope of course that it has an actual measurable impact on the environment in the long term as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob. This has been an IBM Podcast. This is Bob Sutor. Thank you very much. [END OF SEGMENT] 5

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