I’m not sure if this story is true or just plain funny but it seems Accenture may have actually gotten patent rights to “outsourcing”.
A quick post at Techdirt quotes:
“Back in 2005, Accenture Chief Scientist Dr. Kishore Swaminathan teased in a blog entry: ‘I have an idea that could revolutionize an important area of information technology – but I cannot tell you because I might compromise Accenture’s patent rights.‘
In January, Swaminathan and co-inventor Charles Nebolsky were granted U.S. patent protection for Rapid knowledge transfer among workers, which covers ‘transferring knowledge from expert workers at a client location to apprentice workers’ at ‘offshore locations such as India, the Philippines, China, etc., where labor is less expensive‘.
Whoa, does that mean global blog networks with have to pay royalties to Accenture for outsourcing probloggers from the Philippines?
IBM was reportedly claiming the same patent rights for offshoring a couple months ago:
A method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization. The method is provided on a computer readable medium and includes the steps of identifying at least one task being performed by an organization; associating each identified task with a functional group within a plurality of functional groups related to the organization; determining information about individual human resources spent on each task; determining task information about human resources spent on the plurality of tasks, the task information based on the determined information about individual human resources spent on each task; using the determined task information to determine a value of each task; and outsourcing tasks having a value lower than a predefined limit to at least one of offshore and to a low cost supplier.
It has since backed out from that claim. But wow, the Philippines could be part of a really landmark patent right on putting up call centers. *hehehe*
Quite interesting. It “covers ‘transferring knowledge from expert workers at a client location to apprentice workers’ at ‘offshore locations”. My opinion is that this only gives Accenture protection for its clients that have multiple IT suppliers/vendors.
For example, ABC company has multiple I.T. suppliers (one of which is Accenture) for its hardware, software and IT support services. IBM provides the hardware, Fujitsu provides IT operations support and Accenture provides the software for ABC company.
If ABC company decides to setup some sort of a shared services center in the Philippines, the patent implies that only Accenture is allowed to provide such service for the client. IBM and Fujitsu cannot bid for the lucrative service.
Pretty smart. But I don’t think it will fly because ABC company (usually a big multinational) can easily say that for consumer protection, they can indeed bid this contract out.
@jay, looks like you know a lot about it? anf you think it’s impossible huh? ;)
As a side note, be aware that the scope of patentable inventions in the US and the Philippines are different. Section 22 (Non-Patentable Inventions) of Republic Act 8293 (the Philippine Intellectual Property Code), provides in part, as it appears to be relevant, “The following shall be excluded from patent protection: xxx 22.2. Schemes, rules and methods of performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers; xxx.”
dream on accenture. you won’t get it, that’s too broad.
You can’t just patent “outsourcing” per se. It’s too broad.
Accenture’s patent covers only “Rapid knowledge transfer”. Someone can easily file a patent for “Rapid knowledge sharing”, collaborative learning, bayanihan, instead of simply “transferring” some knowledge.
@Apples, I agree, it’s a segment of outsourcing but still it’s outsourcing.
@brianB, unfortunately Accenture just did and they got it. It’s not just the idea but acting on that great idea. That’s why they’re billionaires and we’re both not. *hehe*
You can’t patent an obvious idea. If you could, I’d be a billionaire. Hey, I’ve got this good idea patent pending. It’s a realistic way to improve people’s finances. Why don’t we all work abroad? What’s 5 per cent of 15 billion dollars a year?
Abe – I don’t think it’s exactly outsourcing that Accenture got a patent for. Its the Rapid Knowledge Transfer process or the Rapid Knowledge Transfer Suite which is only a part of the whole outsourcing thing.