Coffee delivery drone patented by IBM

Perhaps I have become jaded or a conspiracy theorist, but I see this as the following:<p>- the drone space is increasingly easy to enter into - IBM sees non-tech companies might get into drones - they identify potential markets where drones would be useful - they spend minimal resources developing a &quot;prototype&quot; and file for a patent - Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts come along with coffee delivery drones ~3 years later - IBM shakes down Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts for $x.00 per delivery, now has new stream of extortion recurring revenue

Following Dan Shapiro&#x27;s advice[1] for how to read patents,<p>”What is claimed is:<p>A method for delivering a drink to an individual, comprising:<p>connecting the drink to an unmanned arial vehicle (UAV);<p>flying the UAV, the one or more sensors connected to the UAV, the one or more sensors connected to an electronic processing circuit which identifies an individual among the people that may have a predetermined sleepy cognitive state including determining a confidence level corresponding to a probable desire of the individual for the drink including a stimulant which reduces a sleepy cognitive state, based on the sensor data and using sleep data pertaining to sleep experienced by the people when selecting the individual that may have the sleepy cognitive state;<p>accessing sleep data pertaining to the sleep cycle of the individual determined by motion detection of the individual during a sleep period, and adjusting the confidence level in accordance to the sleep data; and<p>if the confidence level reaches a predetermined level, flying the UAV to the individual that may have the sleepy cognitive state to deliver the drink including the stimulant to the individual.“<p>Headline should read &quot;<i>Sleep tracking</i> coffee delivery drone patented by IBM.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11586448" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11586448</a>

IBM pays employees a $500 bonus if their patent proposal gets past an internal review board, and another $500 if the patent office actually awards the patent. The internal review board&#x27;s only concern is if the patent application is likely to be successful. They don&#x27;t care if the idea is silly or has no bearing on the company&#x27;s business.<p>A small subset of employees file the vast majority of IBM&#x27;s patents. These are awarded the title &quot;Master Inventor&quot;. Many Master Inventors earn more from the patent bonuses than they do in actual salary. In theory the title is an accolade but in practice Master Inventors are sometimes shunned because they spend all their time thinking up silly patent ideas instead of doing &quot;real work&quot;.<p>Source: I used to work for IBM and collected a handful of those bonuses before I realized how silly it was.

While the technology is great, I am not sure of its use case. People summoning for coffee is fine. But for people who look tired and distressed, I think coffee is just a &#x27;quick fix&#x27; for that. How about drone reporting it back to the person&#x27;s manager (as a feedback) to indicate if management rework needs to be done (sometimes one person in team ends up doing most of the work). Or drone sending an automated email giving suggestions to the employee to either take a break, go for a walk, drink water, or give recommendations of meeting other people who are in the same state. Maybe the drone can even take into account the project which the employee is working on and help him socialize with others who are working on other projects, which ultimately might give rise to a brand new project idea. Just my two cents!

This shows how idiotic the patent system is: you just generate a random combination of words, select 10 combinations that make remote sense and create some half-baked implementation on paper for it and suddenly you have the right to money from people who happen to actually implement it properly later.

If I were the CEO of IBM, I&#x27;d wonder what jagoff spent 10 grand (average patent cost, with lawyers and other services) to make a coffee drone joke.

Clearly part of IBM&#x27;s evil plan to take over the world with Watson. After replacing game players, retail associates, financial advisors, scientists, and doctors, the only challenge left is the office intern.

&gt; IBM suggests the drone could be equipped with technology to detect blood pressure, pupil dilation and facial expressions and judge whether people are drowsy.<p>Why waste the time on brewing coffee? Just have it fly around and administer routine caffeine injections.

I&#x27;d like to see the same technology be used to deliver alcohol to the least drunk person at a party.

Nobody else disturbed by the idea of a computer identifying under-performing employees and delivering them a shot of a stimulant? Coffee is rather tame, but this is a step towards many a scifi trope.

I fail to see what is novel about &quot;delivering X via drone&quot;. Is delivering a new thing via truck patentable?<p>What, specifically, did they invent? Its the same patent landgrab as software patents where it is &quot;do X, but on the internet&quot;.<p>I&#x27;d call this as IBM trying to lay down a patent minefield against those that would actually engage in commerce. In this sense, the patent does not advance the arts or sciences and should fail the sniff test for granting an absolute monopoly to a corporation on some action.

Have the figured out how to stop downdraft from the props to not blow away paper off people&#x27;s desk?<p>Does the drone not embark with hot coffee payload if battery is not enough to complete the journey without spinning blades and scalding liquid crashing on people or computers?<p>Can they make it operate at &gt;60dB so people can work?<p>If those questions don&#x27;t have satisfactory answers, how could it possibly be that this invention &quot;expresses a specific, credible, and substantial utility&quot; such that it is deserving of patent protection?

what&#x27;s the point of patenting technology and not really producing it? I think they just want to sue potential innovative companies and not taking any risk.

This is so counter intuitive when patents like this are awarded. So if someone wants to make a drone that delivers tea&#x2F;coffee they pay royalty to IBM but is it ok if they deliver paper supplies or food?<p>In future this has total implications for drinks&#x2F;soda companies and ironically IBM manufactures none. This is a perfect example of how patent system is totally broken and needs some kind of change.

IBM is always chasing the latest hype, but their ability to execute is lacking. Just looking at how they are all over blockchain tech with so many talking heads. The same with drones I imagine. They truly believe with enough screen time people will start taking a notice of this Potyomkin village type company.

Ha as the owner of a few drones who has dreamed up a few ideas like this I think the biggest issue is noise. Can’t realistically have one of these flying in an office or social setting without irritating a bunch of people. Would be curious to see what can be done to make drones quieter though.

Having seen both sides of patents vs non-patents arguments. The only sane conclusion I have come to is, to have a validity for a much shorter duration for tech patents like 10 years or so. If the company cannot extract value from it in the next 10 years or less, then let someone else do it.

Flying hot coffee. What could go wrong?

Link to the patent <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patents.google.com&#x2F;patent&#x2F;US20170174343A1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patents.google.com&#x2F;patent&#x2F;US20170174343A1&#x2F;</a>

Limitless human ingenuity being used...to deliver coffee to tired people.

SAP must be kicking themselves for not thinking of this one.

So, we gonna have a distinct patent for every X-delivery-Y where X is a kind of item to be delivered and Y is a method of delivery?

Is IBM just a marketing company now?

does IBM even do anything anymore other than these stupid meme-technology ideas to generate headlines?