I have not, but was on teams/worked with people that had submitted and were awarded patents. These weren't scientists or researchers. One was not even a developer. I hate to give too many details, as litigious as this "beast" (your word, good description) is, but I would say that a very large percentage are just junk/obvious crap. There are quite a few divisions within IBM and some are obviously very much dedicated to research and high-end engineering (e.g. IBM Almaden). You would expect patents coming from there. However, when practitioners in services divisions "reinvent" the wheel on something trivial, document it sufficiently and vaguely enough (especially after it has been through cycles of lawyer-ese) ... and patents are issued, it is laughable.
Here is an example of one that is not exactly it (for reason stated above), but similar enough to illustrate absurdity: Think of a Firefox plug-in that would let you right-click at a certain point on a long web page (e.g. on a word, a highlighted paragraph, anyplace .. that is a couple pages down on a long news article) and choose "Bookmark". This would save a "Bookmark" to your toolbar that you could later click and it would not only take you to the web page, but also scroll you to the exact spot you were at before on the page.
This type of stupid simple functionality ... would actually be patented by IBM. Yes .. that functionality had already really existed in one form or another, from multiple methods, yet ... no other company had the absurd gall and audacity to try to actually patent it. You would now search this patent # on USPTO.gov and read it and be amazed at how absurdly abstract and broad this vague function would be described. I would guess it would take you 10-15 minutes of reading and deciphering to even begin to realize what it was for (and would be as stupid simple as what I mentioned above). This is IBM's patent machine.
I can't speak for IBM's research divisions, but I know of no quota for other IBM practitioners (say in one of their services divisions). It is a "badge of honor" in someways (or so they think for some of those folks that submit this stupid crap) as you do have a "Patents" section on the internal profile intranet where it lists if you are a (co)-creator of any patents. Of they hundreds I've seen on people's profile, I don't recall seeing anything meaningful. Mostly of the type that we talk about in places like this as "Patent Troll" material.
Here is an example of one that is not exactly it (for reason stated above), but similar enough to illustrate absurdity: Think of a Firefox plug-in that would let you right-click at a certain point on a long web page (e.g. on a word, a highlighted paragraph, anyplace .. that is a couple pages down on a long news article) and choose "Bookmark". This would save a "Bookmark" to your toolbar that you could later click and it would not only take you to the web page, but also scroll you to the exact spot you were at before on the page.
This type of stupid simple functionality ... would actually be patented by IBM. Yes .. that functionality had already really existed in one form or another, from multiple methods, yet ... no other company had the absurd gall and audacity to try to actually patent it. You would now search this patent # on USPTO.gov and read it and be amazed at how absurdly abstract and broad this vague function would be described. I would guess it would take you 10-15 minutes of reading and deciphering to even begin to realize what it was for (and would be as stupid simple as what I mentioned above). This is IBM's patent machine.
I can't speak for IBM's research divisions, but I know of no quota for other IBM practitioners (say in one of their services divisions). It is a "badge of honor" in someways (or so they think for some of those folks that submit this stupid crap) as you do have a "Patents" section on the internal profile intranet where it lists if you are a (co)-creator of any patents. Of they hundreds I've seen on people's profile, I don't recall seeing anything meaningful. Mostly of the type that we talk about in places like this as "Patent Troll" material.