Be Very Scared of IBM, from Prof. Ross Miller
IBM had an e-commerce group in its Watson Research Center back in the mid-1990s before anyone had heard of e-commerce. The group was organized as a patent mill, with everyone’s compensation directly tied to the number of patents they ground out. People would brainstorm and come up with some truly bizarre things, but overall it is hard to imagine an area of e-commerce where IBM did not get to the patent office well before anyone else with something that can stick .