I find it interesting that here, when a university is doing the patent-suing, HN errs on the defensive side: "Accusing Carnegie Mellon of patent trolling is pr

I find it interesting that here, when a university is doing the patent-suing, HN errs on the defensive side: "Accusing Carnegie Mellon of patent trolling is probably not the most effective way to advocate for patent reform." "Universities have been among the biggest producers of patents for 50+ years now." "The internet needs more details so we can make an uninformed opinion and collectively decide to be impotently pissed off at the university or not." However, when a large commercial entity is suing (e.x. Apple v. Samsung [1]), HN bashes the patent system: "these cases set a chilling precedent for the platform that looks likely to dominate the computing industry for at least the next decade." "It will hurt innovation because every damn thing is going to have to go through a committee of lawyers before being approved, and it will hurt innovation because the idea that innovation always involves making something brand-new and from whole cloth is fucking retarded." "Apple's successful use of the broken patent system sends exactly the wrong signal." Are these entities (Apple and CMU) really all that different? Both spend a lot on R&D, and both want to protect their property. In a sense, there are better reasons to support Apple filing patent lawsuits (forgetting about the specifics of either suit) than CMU. CMU receives a large fraction of funding from taxpayer-funded sources, and produces no real products, just IP. By contrast, Apple receives very little taxpayer money, and uses the patent system to defend its real products. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430101