For the 26th year, IBM is the top recipient of U.S. patents, with a record 9,100, including more than 3,000 patents related to work in artificial intelligence, cloud, and quantum computing in 2018, according to IFI CLAIMS Patent Services.
IBM led the industry with 1,600 AI-related patents, a number of which stemmed from work around the language and machine learning techniques that power Project Debater.
Another significant IBM patent this year was for foundational blockchain technology that encrypts transactions as they are recorded and allows users to share transactions with an encryption key. Different keys can be provided to different user sets depending upon the type of data a user is authorized to access.
IBM inventors also patented significant inventions in quantum computing, including a new way of miniaturizing components that improve the performance of quantum computers. This may allow the integration of discrete elements into a single quantum computing chip.