As someone who used to work at IBM and generated 36 patents for them, I can tell you that the incentives at IBM are HEAVILY in favor of patents at the expense of your "real" work. At IBM, you can bust your A## off all year, work 60 hours a week, and get a PBC rating of 1 (top 10%) and get rewarded with a bonus of 5% (if you're lucky). Or, you can slack off and spend the majority of your time ducking assignments, getting a PBC rating of 2 (middle 50%) and get rewarded with a 2% bonus, and using your work time to submit patents, where you get $1000 per patent. Which path would you choose? Is it any wonder they have so many patents submitted by their employees?

I suppose it depends how many patents you can turn out annually... personally I would rather see my salary double each 14 years rather than in 36.

I said bonus, not raise. Your salary would never double at IBM unless you were one of the chosen few pegged for superstardom.

Interesting list, thanks for the link. Note it's steadily increasing each year, with nearly 18 patents per day in 2012. That's a crazy number for me.

And they have been exiting the hardware business.