In 2012, IBM recorded 6,478 patents, which is more than 17 per day -- including the weekends. That's an insane amount of research and development activity. Seriously. IBM's a big company, but its research and development investment stands tall. In fact, 6,478 exceeds the combined total of well-known companies like Accenture, Amazon, Apple, EMC, HP, Intel, Oracle/SUN, and Symantec.
IBM's Jeopardy!-playing Watson machine is a big, high-profile win, of course, that's already being used in medical research efforts. If you're interested in learning more about IBM's patents and focus on innovation, check the company's "20 years of patent leadership and innovation" mini site created by IBM Research. In the meantime, the YouTube video below, "Who Would Have Known," is a good place to start:
