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> First, the university owns whatever IP you come up with, and will happily exclusively license that IP to entities with no interest in developing it That's si
by light_hue_1 4y ago
> First, the university owns whatever IP you come up with, and will happily exclusively license that IP to entities with no interest in developing it
That's simply not true.
Academia has a lot of problems, we don't need to start making up new ones.
Universities want money. The #1 concern, by far, of any university technology licensing office is to get those patents working so that they can reap the benefits in terms of huge licensing fees. Literally, no one wants to license anything to anyone who won't develop it.
Also, university licensing offices always have deals where the researchers get the right of first refusal with their own IP.
> Any kind of applied research in the US academic sector these days is best understood as corporate ...
Academics do very little applied research. Overwhelmingly, we do what is called basic research. Finding cool new ideas. Then, we give them to those corporations that do the overwhelming amount of applied research. This is how the system is supposed to work!
> The job description has become indistinguishable from that of in-house corporate researcher
No idea what university you at. But this is totally false for any university I've seen.
> The obvious fix is to eliminate exclusive licensing of academic IP (i.e. repeal the 1980s Bayh-Dole Act)
So.. you want academics to do less impactful research that has fewer applications? Because that's the outcome of denying us the ability to patent our own work.
- cratermoon 4y ago> Literally, no one wants to license anything to anyone who won't develop it. Yes, but that doesn't prevent them from licensing things to organizations with a lot of money regardless of intent. If there's enough money involved, say a multi-million dollar endowment, the academic administration wouldn't give two shits about whether or not the licensee develops it.
- light_hue_1 4y ago> Yes, but that doesn't prevent them from licensing things to organizations with a lot of money regardless of intent Why in God's name would a corporation with a lot of money pay for a patent they don't want to develop? Wallpaper is a lot cheaper at Home Depot. Seriously. This doesn't pass the most basic "is this remotely plausible" test. Anyway, universities tend to give licenses that make them money as the patent is used. There is no world under which they want them to be wasted.
- cratermoon 4y agoIf you don't believe that patents and corporate secrets are bought and kept under warps to protect profits for existing business lines, I can't disabuse you of your naivete.
- pixl97 4y agoIf you sell widgets for big bucks and someone invents a nearly free widget replacement that could interfere with your primary income.
- XorNot 4y agoPoint to one example of this happening. Since patent ownership is by definition public information, it should be easy to find an example. I'll wait.
- cratermoon 4y agoThe forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 [1] 1. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/20/oil-company-records-exxon-co2-emission-reduction-patents https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/20/oil-company...