IBM wants to patent a means of responding to hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, solar flares, flooding, terrorism, war, pandemics, and other situations where you would hope companies aren't worried about patents.

With a US patent application (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080077463%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080077463&RS=DN/20080077463) just released to the public and turned up by Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080330/221504.shtml), Big Blue seeks exclusive rights to a "system and method for optimizing the selection, verification, and deployment of expert resources in a time of chaos."

When chaos descends, you tell the system what you need, and the system decides if you can get it. "A determination is made whether the skills and the resources are available in response to receiving an identification of the skills and the resources that are required to manage the chaotic event," reads the patent.

The system does a lot of optimizing, determining, and verifying. "The skills and the resources are optimized based on requirements and constraints, potential skills, and enabling resources to determine optimized skills and optimized resources. The availability of the optimized skills and the optimized resources are verified."

And if the optimized skills aren't handy, the system does some reoptimizing. "The optimized skills and the optimized resources are reoptimized in response to a determination that the optimized skills and the optimized resources are unavailable."

It all looks something like this:

So, if IBM nabs this patent and the next 9/11 rolls around, expect to see a Global Services team descend upon the scene, ready to consult and reoptimize the hell out of the situation for as long as it takes to get the job done right. ®

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