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Universities have formed a company that looks a lot like a patent troll

815 points by polm23 5y ago

vmception 5y ago
Without commenting on the patent system it is still easy to conclude that Universities shouldnt be in this business It should be easy to legislate their participation in non practicing entity patent litigation
- kemitchell 5y ago
  Universities are all non-practicing in the sense they don't commercialize inventions directly. If they enforce a patent, it's as a non-practicing entity. If they couldn't enforce, who would license?
  - vmception 5y ago
    Institutions of higher learning have done their job by filing and disclosing the invention and sharing it for free
    - kemitchell 5y ago
      Apparently that's not how Congress felt when they passed Bayh-Dole.
      - vmception 5y ago
        Yeah and if I talk about it enough theyll pass a new law
      - an1sotropy 5y ago
        How is it that you're the only one mentioning Bayh-Dole? That was the original sin of all this. The rest is inevitable.
      - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
        TIL Bayh-Dole And after 30 seconds of reading I already feel it should be repealed as disadvantages the citizens by giving companies rights to something we paid for.
MattGaiser 5y ago
> Universities are centers for teaching, research, and community. But that broader social mission is exactly why universities shouldn’t go off and form a patent-holding company that is designed to operate similarly to a patent troll. The problem is that mission requires money. Lots of money. Researchers need pay (and many already earn next to nothing). Researchers need equipment. I get why this is disquieting, but it also has hints of the idea that charities should be run with the cheapest people available, even in critical executive positions. As a society we have decided that we don't really want to fund that mission all that well, so this is what they come up with. And if they abide by the gentleman's agreement to not go after small businesses, the other harm should be minimized. I am not sure that I agree with it but the money would at least likely go back into academia so I am not a visceral no.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Universities are making plenty of money. At this point, they're hedge funds with schools attached to them. Harvard has a $38 billion endowment, Yale $29 billion, Princeton $26 billion.
  - emsign 5y ago
    Yes, and with the money come higher prices and bigger administrative overhead. Because they can get the funds they will charge more.
    - gravypod 5y ago
      It's unfortunate we live in this world. Harvard takes in ~2k/year. Each student stays for ~4 years. This means ~10k are on campus at any time. Harvard costs ~50k/year. This means it costs ~500,000,000/year for all of Harvard's student bodies. If Harvard has a 38b endowment they can spend on education (they probably don't, probably named buildings) they could fund ~76 years of Harvard without charging a dime to students. I wish we lived in the world that was possible. Also, could we reduce college costs by: mandating college credit transfer and allowing students to test out of unlimited classes. I tested out of 3 classes for my degree (the max) just using my ~8 years of experience as a programmer. I wasted so much time on courses I knew the material for. If I could just get a pile of study materials and tests I would have saved buckets.
emsign 5y ago
Universities have incorporated scams and hussling for money into their very foundation in a destructive and predatory manner. Young smart people should really consider if they want get defrauded of their future by enrolling there.
- xenihn 5y ago
  Pension funds tied to universities are also buying up homes in major cities throughout the country (often near universities), further harming the young people they were originally meant to serve.
arpa 5y ago
To be fair, academia everywhere is exploitative and toxic to its members, with exceptions, perhaps, of top level administrative positions - see [0]. So this kind of exploitative and toxic behavior does not surprise one bit. Who wants to bet that these patents will be created by students for negative pay? [0] https://alexandreafonso.me/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/ https://alexandreafonso.me/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles...
- musicale 5y ago
  As I understand it, it is typical for universities to claim ownership of all graduate student inventions. Faculty can sometimes get a decent cut of royalties, and can also benefit twice if they found a company that uses the patents.
  - gspr 5y ago
    > As I understand it, it is typical for universities to claim ownership of all graduate student inventions. I'm highly opposed to a lot of what's described in this thread, and to the tearing down of academia in general. But I don't think it's wholly insane that universities own grad student inventions in all cases. Where I was a grad student, for example, we were regular employees on a fixed-term contract. Sure, we weren't paid stellarly well, but quite decently (maybe 20% below the average for an industry job). At that point I don't think it's weird that the inellectual property we produced (in my case just code that didn't earn them a dime) was theirs.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      This is probably against some WTO or government law; but for a moment set that aside and consider. What if these universities were some kind of public benefit think tank or lab that happened to also be a university? If instead of a profit to general investors any profits had to either be re-invested in research projects or go into the general fund of the national government they operate beneath? With the additional requirement that any gained research become the public domain? Possibly with some of the more dangerous stuff being classified but filed under seal as prior art? PS: Please pay ABOVE prevailing wage to attract the best talent to the advancement of technology.
ElViajero 5y ago
I understand that there is a historical expectations that Universities should provide education and be a role model for society. But, as far as I know, in the USA universities are just another business. The USA should stop being surprised each time that a company rises prices of a live-saving treatment or starts a patent troll company. Some of this kind of problems are exclusively a USA problem and do not exist in other developed parts of the world. Why is that? My 2 cents are that you need is to create rules for a fair game. As a society you should regulate how companies behave, what is permitted and what is not. You elect your government make it work for you. It is not always easy, as there are many interests, but it is possible. For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion?
- bushbaba 5y ago
  The joke goes in Canada they apologize in America they sue. The issue is the patent system itself. It’s needs to be reformed as right now it’s very much an arms race for defense and exploitation. I kind of like china’s approach of lax ip enforcement. Goes a long way to encourage R&D. Or just make parents enforceable for 5-10 years total. The current 20+ years is too longs these days given the recent increased pace of innovation.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Ideally there should be more nuance in patent durations. 20 years for a new steam turbine design seems entirely reasonable. 20 years for a new electronic gadget like an improved LED seems too long. But any way to get different patent durations would probably be gamed and/or unfair, so maybe just reducing the patent duration to 10 years is the best approach.
- csa 5y ago
  > For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion? I left academia because it was clear to me that professors were rapidly becoming commoditized by the administrators. First, it was the students (both grad and undergrad), then the adjunct faculty, and then the tenure track/tenured faculty. I don’t know for sure (esp. about the early years), but it seemed to me like this trend started in the 80s, gathered steam and the 90s, and hit its stride in the 00s. IMHO, this is the byproduct of the white collarization (administrationization) of as much of US society as possible, especially notable in education and medicine (where the doctors have been commoditized by the admins). I personally think that so much of this is make-work for a society that should be moving towards post-work, but US society has culturally ingrained work ethic guilt that makes equality and leisure things that are not aggressively sought after consistently throughout society. The end result is administrators who essentially make work for each other while providing much less societal value than is justified by their cost while actively devaluing the “real” work done by those around them. This patent stuff is just a continuation of the power grab of the university administrators.
rauhallinen 5y ago
During my time as a research assistant / grad student there was a remarkable shift in the atmosphere. It started with massive layoffs of research staff, linked to the more general savings of our government. More esoteric professors were replaced with more efficient manuscript machines submitting manuscripts to more prestigious journals. Soon after the layoffs, the university's innovation and commercialization services became extremely active. Recurring events at lecture rooms where we were blasted on how our work is IP of the university, how the university takes only 50% cut if something works, how cool is it to be a researcher who commercializes ideas in comparison to being one those dusty farts in the science cave studying one protein or butterfly for their entire life. Being a believer and practitioner of open source, I once asked how does this all this apply to computational science. Basically all algorithms and tools should be passed through them to see if they have commercial potential - if no, we can go ahead. Found it appalling and interfering with my intellectual freedom, one of the many events that made me pursue life outside the academia.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  That would frustrate me as well! Did they retaliate against anyone for open source? Do you mind if I ask if you went to a public or private university? In the US?
- musicale 5y ago
  I believe some universities make exceptions for open source projects, which seems fair. Basically if you want to give something away then you can, though the university will still own the copyright. I'm not 100% sure how patents work at such institutions, but I believe they can potentially be licensed for free to open source projects and their derivatives (e.g. they won't demand that Apple pay royalties if they use your open source software in an iPhone, as long as they abide by the open source license terms.) If you want to make it closed source/proprietary and sell it, then the university wants license fees (but you get a cut of those fees, so it's sort of a kickback scheme, but the university picks the fee and there is a set percentage that you get.)
  - ok123456 5y ago
mannerheim 5y ago
Grants from the NSF, etc. should only be granted on the condition that the research produced enters the public domain. Taxpayer dollars should not go towards producing research the public cannot benefit from without paying to license a patent or access a $100 journal article.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Not sure I 100% agree. Commercializing creates jobs, tax income, and encourages the best and brightest to focus on the issue. Many researchers in academia are still monetary driven. Those journals “peer review” and provide a quality bar for the content. The government didn’t cover the journal cost but instead covered the research cost. Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    > Commercializing creates jobs, tax income, and encourages the best and brightest to focus on the issue. There's nothing preventing the fruits of research from being commercialised just because that research has been made public domain. > Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas. There is already a similar requirement for NIH grants. Research produced with NIH grants has to be made available on PubMed Central.
    - bushbaba 5y ago
      Pubmed is accessible to the world. Not just American entities. Wouldn’t it benefit America to ensure funded research is used to benefit the American interest. Not saying it’s right but the system I believe is currently WAI.
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        Well, that does it, I suppose. We can't require that public money goes to actually benefiting the public because God forbid people outside of America might also benefit from it.
javajosh 5y ago
It would be hilarious if every patent-holding individual sued a non-practicing entity for infringement. Ideally they would do it simultaneously in every conceivable venue, nationwide. Call it "Patent Month". Make it an annual ritual, a coming out party for freshly minted IP attorneys to cut their teeth. But seriously, what a shame. Can you imagine if calculus was patented and made artificially scarce to enrich someone? How much poorer would the world be?
- dgb23 5y ago
  How much richer would it be if it went into the other direction!
- nnvvhh 5y ago
  How can you sue an NPE for infringement when they are not practicing the invention?
  - javajosh 5y ago
    They still have to use phones, fax machines, computers, software, and the internet, right?
KingOfCoders 5y ago
If it quacks...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cycomanic 5y ago
If one accepts the premise of the patent system (and I don't necessarily), i.e. that it somehow is a way to reward innovation, then I find this discussion about patent trolls contradictory. Why should only companies who make something benefit from the patent system? Somehow it's expected that the universities (and small innovators who can't afford lawyers to fight big guys violating a patent) generate free knowledge for companies. It's quite disappointing that the eff is propagating this view. It reminds me a lot to what is happening in OSS, where big corporations and startups are making billions of software build by volunteers that burn out maintaining said software while working another day job. The same companies then pad themselves on the back if they sponsor some project with a couple of thousand dollars a year for supporting open source.
- akomtu 5y ago
  One shouldn't accept this premise in a country that runs on pure refined greed. From that greedy cynical perspective, I'd think about patents this way. Say you have a voice you use to say things. I'm, a rich greedy racoon, thinking "hm.. how can I own his voice so anything he says would pay me a royalty?" And I come up with a clever plan: make a law that allows anyone to wrap their voice into a "patent" that can be sold or rented like a property. The law is sold as a way to empower good voices and reduce inequality. Then, I manufacture a situation where people in need have to sell their voices to buy food. Now I'm a landlord, I mean voicelord, who "owns" voices. Very legal and very cool. Iirc, this is how Edison got to "own" Tesla's inventions.
- swiley 5y ago
  The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. Setting everything else aside, academia is the one place where patent issuance is matched with a non-legalese description of the invention. Nearly all software patents in academic CS are matched by a series of academic articles, which aren't always super well-written, but are almost always infinitely better than the inscrutable JD-drafted legalese found in patent applications. It's not perfect, but academia (and industrial labs that function similarly to academia) get much closer to the spirit of "sharing how your invention works" than patents that are issued to basically any other type of institution. > I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing. I think this view comes from a pretty common misunderstanding of patent law. You don't need to actually build a thing to get a patent. There are tons of patents for e.g. power-plant components that AFAIK have never actually been built. You don't need to write a single line of code to get a software patent.
rmason 5y ago
I think the damage the Universities in this group will do to their brand will far exceed what ever money they make as a patent troll. I was glad that my alma mater of Michigan State was not on the list but our neighbor to the South the University of Michigan was included. Ann Arbor for years has been the strongest entrepreneurial community in the state (with Detroit coming up fast) and I have to wonder what their reaction would be to this news?
benatkin 5y ago
I'm proud that my Alma Mater isn't on that list. Being mediocre occasionally pays off!
runeks 5y ago
> A 2013 Brookings Institute study showed that 84% of universities didn’t make enough money from their patents to cover the related legal costs and the staffing of their tech transfer office. You don’t have to make money from patents for them to make sense. They can work as an insurance against patent suits. As I understand it, this is the reason many large corporations file so many patents: if they get sued, they hope that the other party has violated a patent of theirs, and they can reach a setttlement.
- 8note 5y ago
  That mostly makes it seem like the whole thing is useless. Everyone has patents on everything, so there's always a settlement to be had. You could do away with all the paperwork by abolishing the patents
  - runeks 5y ago
    I agree completely.
- new299 5y ago
  Has anyone ever taken action against a university for patent infringement? Seems very unlikely.
Woodi 5y ago
Looks US patent system is guilty of universities stupidization is US... So, let's bring some history at least as I learned it. Photography was invented and in UK patented. But it wasn't patented in France so it was developed more - not stagnating (like in UK). And that nicely explains why "early masters" in photography are from France - development, development, development. But in post WW2 US NSA was created (1957?) and all cryptography science was, at least, enforced to be self-censored. Looks like later self-censoreship was extendet for rest of the science - I bet in the name of US strategic adventage... That started killing science in US. On top of that you have culture of nation-wide gread in winner-takes-all-and-noone-helps-him clothes. I would call it Albion 2.0 greed... Patent everything including not-realy inventions ! Greed is strong in US. And that makes US literaly equivalent of ancient Egiptian priests that know how science of sun eclipses work but do not share and exploit it for own gain. And that makes further science development imposible (in US). There is one more thing: economy/management/etc graduates are kind of sociopaths-by-education. Years of brainwashing make them to extract cash from everything for themselves. Not company or enterprise! R&D or long term projects ? No way ! Bonus over all ! And thay are good at that economy/management work but it's like kids playing in someone workshop - them have no clue what's going on and what's possibly can be achieved. Just look and HN links... Anything new and interesting (in science) comes from Europe, Japan, Australia, Brasil ! And from US comes only details for already discloused ideas and fields. That is my impression and I'm sure statistic could [dis]prove it.
- frockington1 5y ago
  How are all of those countries so far behind economically if they are so much more efficient than the US? If Brazil is one of the epicenters of science, what is going on that is causing it to be plagued by violence and gang wars?
  - Woodi 5y ago
    Man... How it even possible to colapse unrelated things like economy stength with plain scientific paper(s) ?? But want an answer to why US is stronger/better in economy/industry ? a) US won WW2 and didn't have shit in goverment like comunism in Europe; b) US is continent size country - and in last decades it matters: more peoples, more resources, same culture; c) US had blessing from "In God we trust" and as is written that blessing spans 1k generations :) Also US was/is active in hijacking whole industries, for example computers making.
corentin88 5y ago
> It’s good news when universities share technology with the private sector, and when startup companies get formed based on university research. It’s public money that is going to feed private individuals. With no ROI/commission. I don’t feel like it’s good news.
- dgb23 5y ago
  It’s good news if they pay taxes, lobby for public research and education, don’t abuse their power to exploit workers and manipulate customers.
lanevorockz 5y ago
Maybe because it is ? As covid proves that universities are becoming expensive childcare it might actually break their business model. Remember Steve Jobs ? or Bill Gates ? or Elon Must ? Maybe these guys knew a thing or two about hiring the right people.
inigojonesguy 5y ago
I have two questions: 1. many times in HN comments I saw the opinion that ideas are cheap and scaling is everything, so why do you care if universities keep the patents? 2. from the point of view of the academic researcher, is there any difference between patent kept by university and no patent, but scaled by a company?
samaman 5y ago
THIS this is so accurate, and the patenting offices are so bureaucratic too! Worked in one at a UC and if I worked past 5pm or came in early, people thought I was crazy. I remember I set up a linkedin tracker one week and people thought I was so fast moving. Meanwhile, the part of the office that actually helped startups had 1/5th the people and kept scaring away students who actually needed help because the students kept thinking the office would claim their idea as university property and make them pay for the rights to their own startups. This is why the UC is not the as good as Waterloo or other universities for startups, and its only getting worse as more programs have usage fees now (looking at you Skydeck). Also, did I mention that the UC gave $250m to Vivek Ranadive, owner of Sac Kings, to run a VC firm, Bow Capital, to invest in UC founders, and that company is now instead launching a SPAC to take Wework public? Yeah the UC startup ecosystem is kinda trash....
makomk 5y ago
Wouldn't be the first time universities have acted like patent trolls. For example, you know the filament-style LED lightbulbs that are really popular these days? The University of California has been going after a bunch of retailers with patent lawsuits for selling them, complete with PR push about how it was their invention that had been stolen from them. I looked at what they'd actually invented and patented at the time, and it was nothing like those filament LED lightbulbs - it was a old-fashioned resin-dome LED that replaced the metal anvil the die is usually mounted on with a TIR reflector, supposedly to improve efficiency. This was completely impractical, pointless and had no market value - the metal anvil is really useful both as mechanical support and a heatsink, you'd almost certainly lose any possible efficiency gain that resulted from capturing more of the rear light output due to higher temperatures. However, they'd worded their patent claims in such a broad way that they could cover nearly anything, and the university used this to file for patents that were actually similar to the LED filaments after they'd already been invented by someone else and put on the market but backdated in validity to their original patent. This isn't just a software-related problem.
- ctf1er 5y ago
  awah wahh
- rdudekul 5y ago
  I find Patents evil the same way hardcore racism is. Exploitation and profiteering are their motivations under the guise of fear and protection. From all of my work experience, it is finding product-market-fit that is harder than filing a bunch of patents or better yet buying them up in bulk. Yet startups can be hugely liable to patent trolls. Did not realize how much the Universities themselves are perpetuating this problem.
gigatexal 5y ago
Instead of a patent company wouldn't these universities be better served to work as sort of early stage VCs. The university acts as a way to train engineers and then in partnership perhaps with their professors they solve real world problems. To market their solutions these engineers partner with the university to use its endowment to fund the startups? The university of Michigan I think already does this.
arthur_sav 5y ago
I think US universities have diverged from their original purpose. They're more obsessed with money than actual education.
- tsjq 5y ago
  MBAs have ventured into this space too. beancounting, cost-center vs profit-center, optimising for revenues, more PR, & so on .
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>"Patents aren’t needed to share knowledge [...]" // Obviously, but are they needed to reward/stimulate innovation? One can view this, the situation of the OP, as Universities going after commercial enterprise who are exploring the universities inventive output but are not putting funding into that community. Licensing fees would ensure that those companies using a universities innovations help to pay for future innovations. Patents do what non-commercial and share-alike aspects of free-libre copyright licensing does; provides a way for financial profit to flow back to innovation centres. It strikes me the _main_ issue in USA with trolls is a poor patent-legal system, not the existence of patents themselves. Though the USC's liberal acceptance of business method and software patents probably isn't helping.
williesleg 5y ago
Universities are so smart! They teach communism so well and love china!
nceqs3 5y ago
Anybody who receives public funding should be forced to license their patents under FRAND terms.
motohagiography 5y ago
This looks like a way to enforce social governance by secondary means. e.g. "company X, you must adopt these policies or we will use these esoteric things you can't reason about to use litigation to isolate you from investors and major customers." It is utterly pernicious, especially because they are apparently collecting bundles of low quality patents that are primarily a source of legal uncertainty that they can leverage politically via legal channels. Whether patent aggregators like this are the intent of IP regulation is dubious, and this organization seems like an arbitrage play against a convention to not be an anti-social PoS. The two factors that could make this a storm are that a) schools are very likely not bound by anti-competitive regulations that would prevent them colluding to create a provisional militant lawfare body to engage in threatening other organizations, and b) the architecture of the patent system does not anticipate someone aggregating patents based on their weakness and uncertainty to weild as a political weapon. Maybe this is uncharitable, but as someone who remembers the total nonsense vortex that was SCO the first time around, and in security I have watched the various efforts to establish influence over FOSS via crypto backdoors and other means, this effort looks like a macro-strategic play to seize the means of production.
Andy_G11 5y ago
Universities should get some financial credit for inventions arising from their studies. But there might be instances where important science should be undertaken even if it offers no medium term opportunity for commercial reward. E.g. studying sea urchin skeleton formation could provide insights into blood vessel growth in humans, but which co would pay someone to study sea urchins in the first place? Or mole rats - in the course of studying the creatures, scientists realised that they are age-defying - but which co would pay for the initial few decades of mole rat research that led to this realisation? Commercial gain is only a problem if it becomes the tail that wags the dog of science, narrowing its scope for the pursuit of short term profit. If universities are going to collaborate in research, then allowing multiple universities to benefit from patents arising from joint research makes sense, else patents would raise a competitive bar between scientists which would be counter-productive.
theknocker 5y ago
The descent of academia into elitist antagonizers of the public continues. Purely gatekeepers. Inferior to the internet at their stated mission.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
EFF: You just now got the memo? I know a guy who regularly goes IP shopping to a number of top private and public universities, and they welcome him with open arms. They will gladly license and sell that shit all day long because it's a business.
- twphysicsphd99 5y ago
  How does this work?
citizenpaul 5y ago
Dare I mention this on HN? Here it goes. These universities listed legal schools have been converted into communism/socialism brainwashing centers. I started doing personal research during the (Gasp) trump administration due to the how obvious it became the media was completely manipulated by someone. I found in my researching that nearly every misinformation campaign and general SJW madness had ties back to the exact universities listed in this article. Either through law professors employees at uni or from students that graduated from those universities. Here come the downvotes, but do some research for yourself and see that something is going on.
- dang 5y ago
  Please make your substantive points without downvote-baiting, which is explicitly against the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jon37 5y ago
The actual EFF headline is, "15 Universities Have Formed A Company That Looks A Lot Like A Patent Troll". Why was the number "15" omitted from the HN headline? It seems to imply that universities in general are guilty of this. Even if it's true, the article doesn't make that argument. In general I agree with with the EFF that this consortium and software patents in general are harmful. But this change to the headline seems like an editorial twist; it changes the framing of the story.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Probably an overzealous attempt to meet this site guideline: If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
Black101 5y ago
Nice lesson to their students...
silexia 5y ago
Utterly horrifying. The entire patent system should be dismantled as it is anti-competitive and a huge block to legitimate innovation and creativity. Patents raise prices and reduce quality on almost every good and service that is not just a commodity. But to have the government (most universities take tons of government money) start to take ownership of ideas and block private individuals and companies from using those ideas is Orwellian. A true nightmare. Anything that touches public money should be completely open and free for anyone to use.
phkahler 5y ago
>> As many as 95% of university patents do not get licensed at all. Probably because 95 percent of them are worthless, as is the case with patents granted to companies. The simple solution is to stop offering incentives for simply getting patents. The obvious thing to do is offer revenue sharing from the patent licensing, but people at the top generally don't want to pay that much to a (even academic) peon for their innovations. But it's valid - make the incentive relate to the quality of the patent and you'll get better quality.
brokencode 5y ago
Higher education in this country (and probably others too) is unbelievably messed up. Everybody I know or have heard of going to grad school has had to work brutal hours for years on end. That is a recipe for burnout, not academic advancement. Universities today are basically sweatshops for highly educated people. Meanwhile endowments continue to swell, and tuition soars. Somebody is winning in all this, and it isn’t the students or the faculty.
- dlivingston 5y ago
  The amount of depression, suicidal ideation, poor health, and excessive stress that doctoral candidates go through is staggering. I was very, very close to accepting a doctorate program and was ultimately talked out of it by several PhD friends. 4-7 years earning ~$30,000 under the intense pressures of the academy to learn, publish, conference hop, and teach don’t sound fun, esp. when a MSc program is two years and can get you a quite satisfying career (in engineering and science).
da39a3ee 5y ago
> When taxpayers fund research, the fruits of the research should be available for all. How is this statement consistent with academics starting start-ups?
jdonaldson 5y ago
As part of my graduate studies I was able to get funding from a research-oriented startup. The amount of hoops I had to jump through with the university to clear all of their IP related concerns, and to come away with a small fraction of the funding for living expenses was surprising. It made me realized that the university wasn't really on my side, and soured me on an academic career. I wound up setting up funding through a clinical trial protocol that's normally reserved for medical testing. I love the people at my old grad school, but I think academia (in general) is putting administration, IP concerns, and rights management above everything else... and if that's the case you might as well go into industry and at least get paid properly. I loved my research (in recommender systems), and I was willing to sacrifice a good deal to focus on that. However, past a certain point I wasn't.
infogulch 5y ago
The incentives created by our current instantiation of IP law has broken the connection between competence and success, and this fact is slowly eating our culture from the inside out as a result. The division of the bounty of invention (or, attribution of credit) between nation, organization, and individual is fundamental and will never be fully "solved" -- only continuously negotiated -- but the current tilt is doing unsustainable damage to our society. The sudden appearance of Information Technologies and their unprecedented scalability has changed the game in a profound way, enabling a new class of exploitative monopolistic behavior caused by the failure to reward competence in alignment with its addition of value over time. This is the biggest problem facing humanity this century.
NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
>In other words, they’ll be demanding licensing fees over lots and lots of software patents. By and large, software patents are the lowest quality patents, and their rise has coincided with the rise of large-scale patent trolling. Software patents are just a way for lawyers to parasitize some of the productivity (wealth) created by software engineers and companies that actually build things. They should be summarily banned. Now that congress is "only" 40% lawyers (down from 80%) we might be able to get such legislation through government. But I'm sure lobbyists will do everything they can to block it.
flefto 5y ago
Everything must be squeezed.

815 points by polm23 5y ago

Without commenting on the patent system it is still easy to conclude that Universities shouldnt be in this business It should be easy to legislate their participation in non practicing entity patent litigation

kemitchell 5y ago
Universities are all non-practicing in the sense they don't commercialize inventions directly. If they enforce a patent, it's as a non-practicing entity. If they couldn't enforce, who would license?
- vmception 5y ago
  Institutions of higher learning have done their job by filing and disclosing the invention and sharing it for free
  - kemitchell 5y ago
    Apparently that's not how Congress felt when they passed Bayh-Dole.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Yeah and if I talk about it enough theyll pass a new law
    - an1sotropy 5y ago
      How is it that you're the only one mentioning Bayh-Dole? That was the original sin of all this. The rest is inevitable.
    - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      TIL Bayh-Dole And after 30 seconds of reading I already feel it should be repealed as disadvantages the citizens by giving companies rights to something we paid for.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> Universities are centers for teaching, research, and community. But that broader social mission is exactly why universities shouldn’t go off and form a patent-holding company that is designed to operate similarly to a patent troll. The problem is that mission requires money. Lots of money. Researchers need pay (and many already earn next to nothing). Researchers need equipment. I get why this is disquieting, but it also has hints of the idea that charities should be run with the cheapest people available, even in critical executive positions. As a society we have decided that we don't really want to fund that mission all that well, so this is what they come up with. And if they abide by the gentleman's agreement to not go after small businesses, the other harm should be minimized. I am not sure that I agree with it but the money would at least likely go back into academia so I am not a visceral no.

mannerheim 5y ago
Universities are making plenty of money. At this point, they're hedge funds with schools attached to them. Harvard has a $38 billion endowment, Yale $29 billion, Princeton $26 billion.
- emsign 5y ago
  Yes, and with the money come higher prices and bigger administrative overhead. Because they can get the funds they will charge more.
  - gravypod 5y ago
    It's unfortunate we live in this world. Harvard takes in ~2k/year. Each student stays for ~4 years. This means ~10k are on campus at any time. Harvard costs ~50k/year. This means it costs ~500,000,000/year for all of Harvard's student bodies. If Harvard has a 38b endowment they can spend on education (they probably don't, probably named buildings) they could fund ~76 years of Harvard without charging a dime to students. I wish we lived in the world that was possible. Also, could we reduce college costs by: mandating college credit transfer and allowing students to test out of unlimited classes. I tested out of 3 classes for my degree (the max) just using my ~8 years of experience as a programmer. I wasted so much time on courses I knew the material for. If I could just get a pile of study materials and tests I would have saved buckets.

emsign 5y ago

Universities have incorporated scams and hussling for money into their very foundation in a destructive and predatory manner. Young smart people should really consider if they want get defrauded of their future by enrolling there.

xenihn 5y ago
Pension funds tied to universities are also buying up homes in major cities throughout the country (often near universities), further harming the young people they were originally meant to serve.

arpa 5y ago

To be fair, academia everywhere is exploitative and toxic to its members, with exceptions, perhaps, of top level administrative positions - see [0]. So this kind of exploitative and toxic behavior does not surprise one bit. Who wants to bet that these patents will be created by students for negative pay? [0] https://alexandreafonso.me/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/ https://alexandreafonso.me/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles...

musicale 5y ago
As I understand it, it is typical for universities to claim ownership of all graduate student inventions. Faculty can sometimes get a decent cut of royalties, and can also benefit twice if they found a company that uses the patents.
- gspr 5y ago
  > As I understand it, it is typical for universities to claim ownership of all graduate student inventions. I'm highly opposed to a lot of what's described in this thread, and to the tearing down of academia in general. But I don't think it's wholly insane that universities own grad student inventions in all cases. Where I was a grad student, for example, we were regular employees on a fixed-term contract. Sure, we weren't paid stellarly well, but quite decently (maybe 20% below the average for an industry job). At that point I don't think it's weird that the inellectual property we produced (in my case just code that didn't earn them a dime) was theirs.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    This is probably against some WTO or government law; but for a moment set that aside and consider. What if these universities were some kind of public benefit think tank or lab that happened to also be a university? If instead of a profit to general investors any profits had to either be re-invested in research projects or go into the general fund of the national government they operate beneath? With the additional requirement that any gained research become the public domain? Possibly with some of the more dangerous stuff being classified but filed under seal as prior art? PS: Please pay ABOVE prevailing wage to attract the best talent to the advancement of technology.

ElViajero 5y ago

I understand that there is a historical expectations that Universities should provide education and be a role model for society. But, as far as I know, in the USA universities are just another business. The USA should stop being surprised each time that a company rises prices of a live-saving treatment or starts a patent troll company. Some of this kind of problems are exclusively a USA problem and do not exist in other developed parts of the world. Why is that? My 2 cents are that you need is to create rules for a fair game. As a society you should regulate how companies behave, what is permitted and what is not. You elect your government make it work for you. It is not always easy, as there are many interests, but it is possible. For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion?

bushbaba 5y ago
The joke goes in Canada they apologize in America they sue. The issue is the patent system itself. It’s needs to be reformed as right now it’s very much an arms race for defense and exploitation. I kind of like china’s approach of lax ip enforcement. Goes a long way to encourage R&D. Or just make parents enforceable for 5-10 years total. The current 20+ years is too longs these days given the recent increased pace of innovation.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Ideally there should be more nuance in patent durations. 20 years for a new steam turbine design seems entirely reasonable. 20 years for a new electronic gadget like an improved LED seems too long. But any way to get different patent durations would probably be gamed and/or unfair, so maybe just reducing the patent duration to 10 years is the best approach.
csa 5y ago
> For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion? I left academia because it was clear to me that professors were rapidly becoming commoditized by the administrators. First, it was the students (both grad and undergrad), then the adjunct faculty, and then the tenure track/tenured faculty. I don’t know for sure (esp. about the early years), but it seemed to me like this trend started in the 80s, gathered steam and the 90s, and hit its stride in the 00s. IMHO, this is the byproduct of the white collarization (administrationization) of as much of US society as possible, especially notable in education and medicine (where the doctors have been commoditized by the admins). I personally think that so much of this is make-work for a society that should be moving towards post-work, but US society has culturally ingrained work ethic guilt that makes equality and leisure things that are not aggressively sought after consistently throughout society. The end result is administrators who essentially make work for each other while providing much less societal value than is justified by their cost while actively devaluing the “real” work done by those around them. This patent stuff is just a continuation of the power grab of the university administrators.

rauhallinen 5y ago

During my time as a research assistant / grad student there was a remarkable shift in the atmosphere. It started with massive layoffs of research staff, linked to the more general savings of our government. More esoteric professors were replaced with more efficient manuscript machines submitting manuscripts to more prestigious journals. Soon after the layoffs, the university's innovation and commercialization services became extremely active. Recurring events at lecture rooms where we were blasted on how our work is IP of the university, how the university takes only 50% cut if something works, how cool is it to be a researcher who commercializes ideas in comparison to being one those dusty farts in the science cave studying one protein or butterfly for their entire life. Being a believer and practitioner of open source, I once asked how does this all this apply to computational science. Basically all algorithms and tools should be passed through them to see if they have commercial potential - if no, we can go ahead. Found it appalling and interfering with my intellectual freedom, one of the many events that made me pursue life outside the academia.

nomoreplease 5y ago
That would frustrate me as well! Did they retaliate against anyone for open source? Do you mind if I ask if you went to a public or private university? In the US?
musicale 5y ago
I believe some universities make exceptions for open source projects, which seems fair. Basically if you want to give something away then you can, though the university will still own the copyright. I'm not 100% sure how patents work at such institutions, but I believe they can potentially be licensed for free to open source projects and their derivatives (e.g. they won't demand that Apple pay royalties if they use your open source software in an iPhone, as long as they abide by the open source license terms.) If you want to make it closed source/proprietary and sell it, then the university wants license fees (but you get a cut of those fees, so it's sort of a kickback scheme, but the university picks the fee and there is a set percentage that you get.)
- ok123456 5y ago

mannerheim 5y ago

Grants from the NSF, etc. should only be granted on the condition that the research produced enters the public domain. Taxpayer dollars should not go towards producing research the public cannot benefit from without paying to license a patent or access a $100 journal article.

bushbaba 5y ago
Not sure I 100% agree. Commercializing creates jobs, tax income, and encourages the best and brightest to focus on the issue. Many researchers in academia are still monetary driven. Those journals “peer review” and provide a quality bar for the content. The government didn’t cover the journal cost but instead covered the research cost. Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  > Commercializing creates jobs, tax income, and encourages the best and brightest to focus on the issue. There's nothing preventing the fruits of research from being commercialised just because that research has been made public domain. > Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas. There is already a similar requirement for NIH grants. Research produced with NIH grants has to be made available on PubMed Central.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    Pubmed is accessible to the world. Not just American entities. Wouldn’t it benefit America to ensure funded research is used to benefit the American interest. Not saying it’s right but the system I believe is currently WAI.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      Well, that does it, I suppose. We can't require that public money goes to actually benefiting the public because God forbid people outside of America might also benefit from it.

javajosh 5y ago

It would be hilarious if every patent-holding individual sued a non-practicing entity for infringement. Ideally they would do it simultaneously in every conceivable venue, nationwide. Call it "Patent Month". Make it an annual ritual, a coming out party for freshly minted IP attorneys to cut their teeth. But seriously, what a shame. Can you imagine if calculus was patented and made artificially scarce to enrich someone? How much poorer would the world be?

dgb23 5y ago
How much richer would it be if it went into the other direction!
nnvvhh 5y ago
How can you sue an NPE for infringement when they are not practicing the invention?
- javajosh 5y ago
  They still have to use phones, fax machines, computers, software, and the internet, right?

KingOfCoders 5y ago

If it quacks...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cycomanic 5y ago

If one accepts the premise of the patent system (and I don't necessarily), i.e. that it somehow is a way to reward innovation, then I find this discussion about patent trolls contradictory. Why should only companies who make something benefit from the patent system? Somehow it's expected that the universities (and small innovators who can't afford lawyers to fight big guys violating a patent) generate free knowledge for companies. It's quite disappointing that the eff is propagating this view. It reminds me a lot to what is happening in OSS, where big corporations and startups are making billions of software build by volunteers that burn out maintaining said software while working another day job. The same companies then pad themselves on the back if they sponsor some project with a couple of thousand dollars a year for supporting open source.

akomtu 5y ago
One shouldn't accept this premise in a country that runs on pure refined greed. From that greedy cynical perspective, I'd think about patents this way. Say you have a voice you use to say things. I'm, a rich greedy racoon, thinking "hm.. how can I own his voice so anything he says would pay me a royalty?" And I come up with a clever plan: make a law that allows anyone to wrap their voice into a "patent" that can be sold or rented like a property. The law is sold as a way to empower good voices and reduce inequality. Then, I manufacture a situation where people in need have to sell their voices to buy food. Now I'm a landlord, I mean voicelord, who "owns" voices. Very legal and very cool. Iirc, this is how Edison got to "own" Tesla's inventions.
swiley 5y ago
The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. Setting everything else aside, academia is the one place where patent issuance is matched with a non-legalese description of the invention. Nearly all software patents in academic CS are matched by a series of academic articles, which aren't always super well-written, but are almost always infinitely better than the inscrutable JD-drafted legalese found in patent applications. It's not perfect, but academia (and industrial labs that function similarly to academia) get much closer to the spirit of "sharing how your invention works" than patents that are issued to basically any other type of institution. > I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing. I think this view comes from a pretty common misunderstanding of patent law. You don't need to actually build a thing to get a patent. There are tons of patents for e.g. power-plant components that AFAIK have never actually been built. You don't need to write a single line of code to get a software patent.

rmason 5y ago

I think the damage the Universities in this group will do to their brand will far exceed what ever money they make as a patent troll. I was glad that my alma mater of Michigan State was not on the list but our neighbor to the South the University of Michigan was included. Ann Arbor for years has been the strongest entrepreneurial community in the state (with Detroit coming up fast) and I have to wonder what their reaction would be to this news?

benatkin 5y ago

I'm proud that my Alma Mater isn't on that list. Being mediocre occasionally pays off!

runeks 5y ago

> A 2013 Brookings Institute study showed that 84% of universities didn’t make enough money from their patents to cover the related legal costs and the staffing of their tech transfer office. You don’t have to make money from patents for them to make sense. They can work as an insurance against patent suits. As I understand it, this is the reason many large corporations file so many patents: if they get sued, they hope that the other party has violated a patent of theirs, and they can reach a setttlement.

8note 5y ago
That mostly makes it seem like the whole thing is useless. Everyone has patents on everything, so there's always a settlement to be had. You could do away with all the paperwork by abolishing the patents
- runeks 5y ago
  I agree completely.
new299 5y ago
Has anyone ever taken action against a university for patent infringement? Seems very unlikely.

Woodi 5y ago

Looks US patent system is guilty of universities stupidization is US... So, let's bring some history at least as I learned it. Photography was invented and in UK patented. But it wasn't patented in France so it was developed more - not stagnating (like in UK). And that nicely explains why "early masters" in photography are from France - development, development, development. But in post WW2 US NSA was created (1957?) and all cryptography science was, at least, enforced to be self-censored. Looks like later self-censoreship was extendet for rest of the science - I bet in the name of US strategic adventage... That started killing science in US. On top of that you have culture of nation-wide gread in winner-takes-all-and-noone-helps-him clothes. I would call it Albion 2.0 greed... Patent everything including not-realy inventions ! Greed is strong in US. And that makes US literaly equivalent of ancient Egiptian priests that know how science of sun eclipses work but do not share and exploit it for own gain. And that makes further science development imposible (in US). There is one more thing: economy/management/etc graduates are kind of sociopaths-by-education. Years of brainwashing make them to extract cash from everything for themselves. Not company or enterprise! R&D or long term projects ? No way ! Bonus over all ! And thay are good at that economy/management work but it's like kids playing in someone workshop - them have no clue what's going on and what's possibly can be achieved. Just look and HN links... Anything new and interesting (in science) comes from Europe, Japan, Australia, Brasil ! And from US comes only details for already discloused ideas and fields. That is my impression and I'm sure statistic could [dis]prove it.

frockington1 5y ago
How are all of those countries so far behind economically if they are so much more efficient than the US? If Brazil is one of the epicenters of science, what is going on that is causing it to be plagued by violence and gang wars?
- Woodi 5y ago
  Man... How it even possible to colapse unrelated things like economy stength with plain scientific paper(s) ?? But want an answer to why US is stronger/better in economy/industry ? a) US won WW2 and didn't have shit in goverment like comunism in Europe; b) US is continent size country - and in last decades it matters: more peoples, more resources, same culture; c) US had blessing from "In God we trust" and as is written that blessing spans 1k generations :) Also US was/is active in hijacking whole industries, for example computers making.

corentin88 5y ago

> It’s good news when universities share technology with the private sector, and when startup companies get formed based on university research. It’s public money that is going to feed private individuals. With no ROI/commission. I don’t feel like it’s good news.

dgb23 5y ago
It’s good news if they pay taxes, lobby for public research and education, don’t abuse their power to exploit workers and manipulate customers.

lanevorockz 5y ago

Maybe because it is ? As covid proves that universities are becoming expensive childcare it might actually break their business model. Remember Steve Jobs ? or Bill Gates ? or Elon Must ? Maybe these guys knew a thing or two about hiring the right people.

inigojonesguy 5y ago

I have two questions: 1. many times in HN comments I saw the opinion that ideas are cheap and scaling is everything, so why do you care if universities keep the patents? 2. from the point of view of the academic researcher, is there any difference between patent kept by university and no patent, but scaled by a company?

samaman 5y ago

THIS this is so accurate, and the patenting offices are so bureaucratic too! Worked in one at a UC and if I worked past 5pm or came in early, people thought I was crazy. I remember I set up a linkedin tracker one week and people thought I was so fast moving. Meanwhile, the part of the office that actually helped startups had 1/5th the people and kept scaring away students who actually needed help because the students kept thinking the office would claim their idea as university property and make them pay for the rights to their own startups. This is why the UC is not the as good as Waterloo or other universities for startups, and its only getting worse as more programs have usage fees now (looking at you Skydeck). Also, did I mention that the UC gave $250m to Vivek Ranadive, owner of Sac Kings, to run a VC firm, Bow Capital, to invest in UC founders, and that company is now instead launching a SPAC to take Wework public? Yeah the UC startup ecosystem is kinda trash....

makomk 5y ago

Wouldn't be the first time universities have acted like patent trolls. For example, you know the filament-style LED lightbulbs that are really popular these days? The University of California has been going after a bunch of retailers with patent lawsuits for selling them, complete with PR push about how it was their invention that had been stolen from them. I looked at what they'd actually invented and patented at the time, and it was nothing like those filament LED lightbulbs - it was a old-fashioned resin-dome LED that replaced the metal anvil the die is usually mounted on with a TIR reflector, supposedly to improve efficiency. This was completely impractical, pointless and had no market value - the metal anvil is really useful both as mechanical support and a heatsink, you'd almost certainly lose any possible efficiency gain that resulted from capturing more of the rear light output due to higher temperatures. However, they'd worded their patent claims in such a broad way that they could cover nearly anything, and the university used this to file for patents that were actually similar to the LED filaments after they'd already been invented by someone else and put on the market but backdated in validity to their original patent. This isn't just a software-related problem.

ctf1er 5y ago
awah wahh
rdudekul 5y ago
I find Patents evil the same way hardcore racism is. Exploitation and profiteering are their motivations under the guise of fear and protection. From all of my work experience, it is finding product-market-fit that is harder than filing a bunch of patents or better yet buying them up in bulk. Yet startups can be hugely liable to patent trolls. Did not realize how much the Universities themselves are perpetuating this problem.

gigatexal 5y ago

Instead of a patent company wouldn't these universities be better served to work as sort of early stage VCs. The university acts as a way to train engineers and then in partnership perhaps with their professors they solve real world problems. To market their solutions these engineers partner with the university to use its endowment to fund the startups? The university of Michigan I think already does this.

arthur_sav 5y ago

I think US universities have diverged from their original purpose. They're more obsessed with money than actual education.

tsjq 5y ago
MBAs have ventured into this space too. beancounting, cost-center vs profit-center, optimising for revenues, more PR, & so on .

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

>"Patents aren’t needed to share knowledge [...]" // Obviously, but are they needed to reward/stimulate innovation? One can view this, the situation of the OP, as Universities going after commercial enterprise who are exploring the universities inventive output but are not putting funding into that community. Licensing fees would ensure that those companies using a universities innovations help to pay for future innovations. Patents do what non-commercial and share-alike aspects of free-libre copyright licensing does; provides a way for financial profit to flow back to innovation centres. It strikes me the _main_ issue in USA with trolls is a poor patent-legal system, not the existence of patents themselves. Though the USC's liberal acceptance of business method and software patents probably isn't helping.

williesleg 5y ago

Universities are so smart! They teach communism so well and love china!

nceqs3 5y ago

Anybody who receives public funding should be forced to license their patents under FRAND terms.

motohagiography 5y ago

This looks like a way to enforce social governance by secondary means. e.g. "company X, you must adopt these policies or we will use these esoteric things you can't reason about to use litigation to isolate you from investors and major customers." It is utterly pernicious, especially because they are apparently collecting bundles of low quality patents that are primarily a source of legal uncertainty that they can leverage politically via legal channels. Whether patent aggregators like this are the intent of IP regulation is dubious, and this organization seems like an arbitrage play against a convention to not be an anti-social PoS. The two factors that could make this a storm are that a) schools are very likely not bound by anti-competitive regulations that would prevent them colluding to create a provisional militant lawfare body to engage in threatening other organizations, and b) the architecture of the patent system does not anticipate someone aggregating patents based on their weakness and uncertainty to weild as a political weapon. Maybe this is uncharitable, but as someone who remembers the total nonsense vortex that was SCO the first time around, and in security I have watched the various efforts to establish influence over FOSS via crypto backdoors and other means, this effort looks like a macro-strategic play to seize the means of production.

Andy_G11 5y ago

Universities should get some financial credit for inventions arising from their studies. But there might be instances where important science should be undertaken even if it offers no medium term opportunity for commercial reward. E.g. studying sea urchin skeleton formation could provide insights into blood vessel growth in humans, but which co would pay someone to study sea urchins in the first place? Or mole rats - in the course of studying the creatures, scientists realised that they are age-defying - but which co would pay for the initial few decades of mole rat research that led to this realisation? Commercial gain is only a problem if it becomes the tail that wags the dog of science, narrowing its scope for the pursuit of short term profit. If universities are going to collaborate in research, then allowing multiple universities to benefit from patents arising from joint research makes sense, else patents would raise a competitive bar between scientists which would be counter-productive.

theknocker 5y ago

The descent of academia into elitist antagonizers of the public continues. Purely gatekeepers. Inferior to the internet at their stated mission.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

EFF: You just now got the memo? I know a guy who regularly goes IP shopping to a number of top private and public universities, and they welcome him with open arms. They will gladly license and sell that shit all day long because it's a business.

twphysicsphd99 5y ago
How does this work?

citizenpaul 5y ago

Dare I mention this on HN? Here it goes. These universities listed legal schools have been converted into communism/socialism brainwashing centers. I started doing personal research during the (Gasp) trump administration due to the how obvious it became the media was completely manipulated by someone. I found in my researching that nearly every misinformation campaign and general SJW madness had ties back to the exact universities listed in this article. Either through law professors employees at uni or from students that graduated from those universities. Here come the downvotes, but do some research for yourself and see that something is going on.

dang 5y ago
Please make your substantive points without downvote-baiting, which is explicitly against the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jon37 5y ago

The actual EFF headline is, "15 Universities Have Formed A Company That Looks A Lot Like A Patent Troll". Why was the number "15" omitted from the HN headline? It seems to imply that universities in general are guilty of this. Even if it's true, the article doesn't make that argument. In general I agree with with the EFF that this consortium and software patents in general are harmful. But this change to the headline seems like an editorial twist; it changes the framing of the story.

CameronNemo 5y ago
Probably an overzealous attempt to meet this site guideline: If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

Black101 5y ago

Nice lesson to their students...

silexia 5y ago

Utterly horrifying. The entire patent system should be dismantled as it is anti-competitive and a huge block to legitimate innovation and creativity. Patents raise prices and reduce quality on almost every good and service that is not just a commodity. But to have the government (most universities take tons of government money) start to take ownership of ideas and block private individuals and companies from using those ideas is Orwellian. A true nightmare. Anything that touches public money should be completely open and free for anyone to use.

phkahler 5y ago

>> As many as 95% of university patents do not get licensed at all. Probably because 95 percent of them are worthless, as is the case with patents granted to companies. The simple solution is to stop offering incentives for simply getting patents. The obvious thing to do is offer revenue sharing from the patent licensing, but people at the top generally don't want to pay that much to a (even academic) peon for their innovations. But it's valid - make the incentive relate to the quality of the patent and you'll get better quality.

brokencode 5y ago

Higher education in this country (and probably others too) is unbelievably messed up. Everybody I know or have heard of going to grad school has had to work brutal hours for years on end. That is a recipe for burnout, not academic advancement. Universities today are basically sweatshops for highly educated people. Meanwhile endowments continue to swell, and tuition soars. Somebody is winning in all this, and it isn’t the students or the faculty.

dlivingston 5y ago
The amount of depression, suicidal ideation, poor health, and excessive stress that doctoral candidates go through is staggering. I was very, very close to accepting a doctorate program and was ultimately talked out of it by several PhD friends. 4-7 years earning ~$30,000 under the intense pressures of the academy to learn, publish, conference hop, and teach don’t sound fun, esp. when a MSc program is two years and can get you a quite satisfying career (in engineering and science).

da39a3ee 5y ago

> When taxpayers fund research, the fruits of the research should be available for all. How is this statement consistent with academics starting start-ups?

jdonaldson 5y ago

As part of my graduate studies I was able to get funding from a research-oriented startup. The amount of hoops I had to jump through with the university to clear all of their IP related concerns, and to come away with a small fraction of the funding for living expenses was surprising. It made me realized that the university wasn't really on my side, and soured me on an academic career. I wound up setting up funding through a clinical trial protocol that's normally reserved for medical testing. I love the people at my old grad school, but I think academia (in general) is putting administration, IP concerns, and rights management above everything else... and if that's the case you might as well go into industry and at least get paid properly. I loved my research (in recommender systems), and I was willing to sacrifice a good deal to focus on that. However, past a certain point I wasn't.

infogulch 5y ago

The incentives created by our current instantiation of IP law has broken the connection between competence and success, and this fact is slowly eating our culture from the inside out as a result. The division of the bounty of invention (or, attribution of credit) between nation, organization, and individual is fundamental and will never be fully "solved" -- only continuously negotiated -- but the current tilt is doing unsustainable damage to our society. The sudden appearance of Information Technologies and their unprecedented scalability has changed the game in a profound way, enabling a new class of exploitative monopolistic behavior caused by the failure to reward competence in alignment with its addition of value over time. This is the biggest problem facing humanity this century.

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago

>In other words, they’ll be demanding licensing fees over lots and lots of software patents. By and large, software patents are the lowest quality patents, and their rise has coincided with the rise of large-scale patent trolling. Software patents are just a way for lawyers to parasitize some of the productivity (wealth) created by software engineers and companies that actually build things. They should be summarily banned. Now that congress is "only" 40% lawyers (down from 80%) we might be able to get such legislation through government. But I'm sure lobbyists will do everything they can to block it.

flefto 5y ago

Everything must be squeezed.