When it comes to developing inventions, Kyndryl’s focus is on innovation and real-world relevance as we leverage this innovation to help our customers and partners succeed and grow. Kyndryl’s current patent portfolio includes approximately 3,200 patents worldwide.  We caught up with Kyndryl’s Head of IP Strategy, Lorie Goins, and Patent Counsel, John Kennel, for the latest on the company’s approach to patenting, and on how new tooling with AI-enabled insights will help Kyndryl’s patent process embody the Kyndryl way – flat, fast and focused.

Q: How would you describe Kyndryl’s overall approach to IP and Innovation?

Lorie Goins: Kyndryl is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, with more than 90,000 employees.  As such, we have a large patent portfolio and a large inventor base. Our IP, data and managed infrastructure delivery differentiate us. In a competitive IT services market where customer satisfaction scores average less than 40 percent, Kyndryl’s customers score us in the 90th percentile. It’s among the reasons our average customer relationship is longer than 10 years.

But we’re taking steps to do even better. Bringing innovations to market quickly – focusing them on our customers’ real-world business and technical challenges – is a critical component of that process. Kyndryl’s commitment to being flat, fast and focused includes implementing an  efficient patenting process focused on the quality of the portfolio and aligned with our current and future business areas.

Q: What are some of the ways Kyndryl is seeking to streamline its patent process?

John Kennel: Kyndryl’s expertise spans many practice areas. Within each practice area, a senior level technical expert leads a team of evaluators that, together with the patent law team, review potential ideas for patenting.

We’re making Kyndryl’s patent process easier and more efficient for the inventors and all reviewers.  Areas in particular where we realized an opportunity for efficiency was in the initial description of the invention and finding a “near real time” way to identify the most relevant prior art. We are working with IP.com and their solutions in these areas, and we are excited with the initial results we are seeing.  IP.com’s innovation suite provides insights that we use to make faster and more informed patent filing decisions.

Q: How is Kyndryl building an innovative culture?

Lorie Goins: Kyndryl operates across more than 60 countries to serve more than 4,000 customers – including 75 percent of the Fortune 100.

Kyndryl recently announced our inaugural class of Distinguished Technical Leaders, including our first Distinguished Designer, to underscore our commitment to our customers. These new leaders are part of a community of more than 80 distinguished leaders across the company in addition to Kyndryl Fellows, who make up the best and brightest. This helps our early-career technologists who come to Kyndryl for opportunities, encouragement and recognition.

This group of technical experts provides significant value to Kyndryl’s creation of patents. Our efficient patenting process provides several advantages: we innovate quickly; we protect those innovations, and as an employer of choice, we attract the best innovators who keep driving results for our customers and for Kyndryl. IP.com’s innovation suite is one piece of our effort to build out a flatter, faster and more focused patent process.