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>The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer. How can it be that the research of
by Kristine1975 11y ago
>The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university
So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer. How can it be that the research of this university isn't in the public domain? The public paid for it, the public should reap the benefits without paying again.
Sure, Apple tries their hardest not to pay taxes, but the patent isn't limited to them.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wmf 11y agoI guess the university can provide better services[1] to the public if it's profitable. [1] Like an NFL-class stadium.
- joezydeco 11y agoAnd those copyrights get enforced.
- SixSigma 11y agoI'm not trying to be snarky but are you being serious ? Because NFL-Class Stadium is not one of the features I would think of if I was doing a bullet list of things a university should have. My 30k student university has a sports hall and a gym.
- joezydeco 11y agoSome of the major college football programs have a net worth over half a billion dollars each. The University of Texas Leghorns (men's football program) brings in over USD$130 million a year. UT has 50K students. http://www.ibj.com/blogs/4-the-score/post/45498-notre-dame-no-2-in-ranking-of-football-riches-iu-tops-purdue http://www.ibj.com/blogs/4-the-score/post/45498-notre-dame-n...
- maxerickson 11y agoYeah, in the conferences with TV deals the sports programs are not a money sink. The Big 10 certainly has a TV deal (it even has its own cable network). Also, just the ticket sales for one game at Camp Randall Stadium bring in ~$4 million.
- joezydeco 11y agoNotre Dame's television deal with NBC was just extended to 2025, at $15 million per season.
- SixSigma 11y agoThat must be why tuition fees are so high and record levels of student debt is required. What an upside down system!
- joezydeco 11y agoNobody pays the sticker price. This podcast explains more: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/05/11/152511771/the-real-price-of-college http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/05/11/152511771/the-r...
- bpodgursky 11y ago> So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer This is not true, at least for most states. For example, the UW system got 1.2 Billion from the state out of a 6 Billion dollar budget: https://www.wisconsin.edu/about-the-uw-system/ https://www.wisconsin.edu/about-the-uw-system/ The large majority of most state university funding comes through tuition, research grants, and donations.
- bfg 11y agoAnd patents!
- aganders3 11y agoWARF (the designated rights holder for UW patents) gives an annual gift of ~$60M to the University, if I recall correctly.
- fisherjeff 11y agoWell the majority of tuition funding is on loan from the federal government and I'm sure a big chunk of that grant money comes from DARPA, NSF, NIH, etc. That's not necessarily to say their work should be in the public domain but it would still be nice to see them focus on more productive uses of their IP rather than just license fee extraction.
- bpodgursky 11y agoThe federal government generally makes a profit on student loans -- (most of them) get paid back eventually.
- fisherjeff 11y agoTrue. My point was more that their budget would look very different if not for federal guarantees on those (relatively risky) loans.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoYou can thank congress for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act
- gmarx 11y agoThe reason for the act, I think, was to provide the incentive to commercialize the results of potentially valuable research. It's not an entirely loony idea
- jlarocco 11y agoI don't know. I kinda like the idea of public universities licensing their research and patents to raise money, and I think the public benefit there outweighs making the research public domain, by decreasing the amount of public funding needed, and/or lowering tuition. I mean, let's be honest here, a patent like this is isn't particularly useful to the public because almost nobody outside of a few very large corporations can afford to implement it, and they stand to make a ton of money from it. The last thing Apple needs is publicly subsidized research.
- matsur 11y agoTo complicate things a little bit, Intel actually funded the research underlying this patent. This was the crux of the WARF vs Intel suit a few years ago — Intel argued they received a license to the patent as part of their grant. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1557536/intel-settles-university-wisconsin http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1557536/intel-settl... "Intel had supported Sohi's research with about $90,000 in gifts in the 1990s and argued it was entitled to the intellectual property that resulted from Sohi's work. However US District Judge Barbara Crabb laughed Chipzilla's argument out of court and ordered the case to trial. She said that the funding terms did not give Intel the right to use patents resulting from the work. However she said that any infringement by Intel was not willful because the funding agreements were ambiguous."