I wouldn't be too concerned just yet. IBM has a gigantic team of lawyers and an entire system set up to push out as many patents as possible. They try to make it as painless as possible to get one, all an employee has to do is submit a one page document and bam, it goes through the layers of processes and 3 months later gets submitted and the employee gets a bonus. They pride themselves on having more patents than any other company every year.
That's not to say they aren't investigating this type of thing, but be aware that they push heavily for everyone to patent anything and everything if you have an idea in the shower.