It is a challenge that we have agreed to meet

John Kelly leads R & D and intellectual property of IBM since July 2007. Key in a post group which has invested 6 billion in R & D in 2007 and is the first depositor of patents in the world. IBM now has a porteuille of 40,000 patents, while 10,000 others are under review by the U.S. patent office. Big Blue is also the origin of the Eco - Patent Commons initiative, by which many manufacturers (Sony, Xerox, Bosch...) freely provide access to some of their patents in the field of the environment ("Les Echos" of yesterday).

What your R & D policy distinguishes from that of your competitors

It differs in several ways. By the amounts invested, first. 6 Billion dollars spent in R & D last year, we we put clearly in mind in the sector. In terms of quality, we are alone can take advantage us of five Nobel Prize over the past 20 years. Finally, we are the only to have a search that scans a broad spectrum, since we are going to the atom to the company Board.

This very strong involvement of IBM in fact research really part integral of its culture, and we see as an advantage over our competitors. For IBM, it is a source of innovations and an excellent map of visit to sign with the best partners, they are business or academic laboratories. We are indeed a growing fraction of our R & D by collaborating with external partners, the objective being to reach 50 of research.

You did a privileged your innovation policy instrument of the filing of patents. Is it not contradictory with the fact of free access to a number of your patent

Our very active policy of industrial property is designed first to ensure the freedom to develop products and services of our choice from our inventions, without anyone can oppose. It is our freedom to operate.

Second, our patents are, permits us, a source of income not negligible since it rises each year to several billion dollars. This is not inconsistent with a policy of licence in areas such as free software, health, education or the environment.

Use "patent pooling", i.e. to the reciprocal cross-licenses with competitors

In "patent pooling", several companies decided to grant licences crossed on the patents they hold each, in a technological field. In cases where certain patents may block the development of an invention, it is the only possible method to break the deadlock and enable the public to benefit in fine. But this method is difficult to handle. It is often difficult to obtain the participants that they are all in common, and the possibility that a participant withdrew with its patents is one major risk to others. We are therefore not really followers of this method.

You come and you engage in a partnership with the ETH of Zurich on nanotechnology, where you have innovated on industrial property. What is the innovation

Usually, when we work with academic laboratories, the rule is that each retains the intellectual property that he invented. Which is derogatory, it is that we can dismiss everyone on our side all of the common invention. It condemns in value more quickly our inventions as a potential competitor to the ETH would have granted a license. It is a challenge that we have agreed to meet.

What is your position on software patents

Software are increasing in our patent portfolio. We consider that, if they are truly innovative and that they have a real technical content, they are patentable. But we believe at the same time that there a lot of abuse. It should not be possible for example to file patents on methods of business organization. For our part, we have waived.