IBM picks up 7,355 patents in 2015, beating Samsung and Canon

Company touts inventions in Watson AI and cloud computing

IBM was awarded 7,355 patents in 2015, topping the list of US patent recipients for the 23rd year in a row.

The company beat off rivals such as Samsung with 5,072 patents and Canon with 4,134.

IBM is presenting itself as an IT company keen on pushing inventiveness over diversifying established product lines, having filed and received patents for the firm's cognitive computing and cloud platform offerings.

Some 8,500 IBM workers contributed to the patent haul across 50 states and territories and 46 countries.

Big Blue's inventions in 2015 included technology to help artificial intelligence systems learn how to understand emotion-laden words so that they can interact with humans in a more natural way.

The company also invented a technology that allows computers to understand language through integrating with humans, and to differentiate between automated machines and humans during online interactions.

On the cloud side, IBM was awarded patents for a way to lay out a topology of available resources in cloud systems to find the shortest route between recourse clusters and the end user to cut down on the latency that can occur in cloud services.

Another patent was for a way to request additional computing resources for other cloud services with spare capacity to help run a heavy workload. The technique also allows clouds with resources to spare to alert other cloud systems with incoming heavy workloads that they have capacity to share.

IBM chairman, president and chief executive Ginni Rometty claimed that the 2015 patents indicate the firm's commitment to pursuing research and development.

"During IBM's 23 years atop the patent list, the company's inventors have received more than 88,000 US patents. IBM's investments in R&D continue to shape the future of computing through cognitive computing and the cloud platform that will help our clients drive transformation across multiple industries," she said.

IBM showcased its Watson cognitive computing technology at CES 2016, and the firm is likely to pick up a large number of patents in 2016.