IBM has elaborate incentive systems that encourage employees to patent every idea that comes into their heads, and few checks to weed out the bad ones. The plan

IBM has elaborate incentive systems that encourage employees to patent every idea that comes into their heads, and few checks to weed out the bad ones. The plan, I suppose, is that it's hard to identify the important patents in advance, and it's worth it to spend millions a year on useless paperwork if every now and then it makes you 100x that. Taking one of IBM's patents as revealing of their overall strategy is like watching a guy scratch his toe and concluding that he probably wants to amputate his leg. There's just no way to connect your observation to any evidence for (or against) the conclusion.