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Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

74 points by sinak2 12y ago

sehugg 12y ago
Are we sure this is about "innovation" and not revenue? http://www.nature.com/news/universities-struggle-to-make-patents-pay-1.13811 http://www.nature.com/news/universities-struggle-to-make-pat...
- a3n 12y ago
  Yes, s/US innovation/university revenue/g
rdl 12y ago
Wow. Universities trying to protect their franchise as businesses (even if they're non-profit, they pay salaries to the people making this pronouncement...), rather than advancing their core mission. Seems a lot like the publishers of journals. Yay! (Perhaps they can die in the same fire.)
- DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  Shocked! I'm just shocked! Gambling at Rick's! (Since universities have an overwhelming interest in making tons of money, this is a typical non-story-story "dog bites man". The only thing of interest is the contortions the players will go through to keep the cronyism humming along. The joke above references the movie Casablanca. Everybody knew that there was a lot of money changing hands but the official position had to be that there was total surprise when it was discovered. If you can't see the money changing hands here, you're not paying attention)
  - 001sky 12y ago
    Presumed credibility is the pretext for all con-artist scams. So hypocrisy is always a story...
- Alex3917 12y ago
  > Universities trying to protect their franchise as businesses rather than advancing their core mission. While I'm generally skeptical of Bayh-Dole, in part because it incentivizes universities to fake their research results, I also think their actual points may be valid. E.g. because the private sector has more money than them to spend on lawyers, this would leave them unable to enforce their I.P. rights, which would cause their patents to become basically worthless. Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property.
  - bediger4000 12y ago
    undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property. In that case, Rightsholders become the new aristocracy: a patent or something is akin to a coat of arms.
  - bsder 12y ago
    > Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property. Um, have you looked at the patent system lately? Only the super rich can afford the legal fees to enforce their patents, anyway. It doesn't matter if I have a patent if the big guys can just grind me into dust, anyway.
lettergram 12y ago
I'd like to say... I just attended a talk where one of the professors is using NSF funding to conduct research, then patent all of their work. Companies are then forced to pay the university based research group for use of their products and for further development. Personally, I cannot decide whether or not this is for the best or not. The research group can bring in more money to produce quality work. On the other hand, the tax payers are benefiting the creation of patented items they have to pay for? It seems really strange to me.
- wahsd 12y ago
  There is so much of that kind of thing going on. It's even worse when public money paid for "research" that resulted in a product that is then sold back to the government and then additional contracts are issued to improve, change, customize, or alter the product. All of which is funded at wildly overpriced rates without any controls or solid guidelines.
  - abalone 12y ago
    Government procurement is an important part of how products are brought to market in our current system. That's not to say it's just or efficient at all. But it would be a mistake to view it as mere waste that ought to be excised without broader reform. Currently it fills the gap between the research and commercialization phases.
    - rebootthesystem 12y ago
      Prove it.
      - abalone 12y ago
        Ok: That thing you are typing on. The first computer was built in the early 50s funded by the Pentagon. They filled entire rooms and were hugely expensive. For the next 25 years or so the government was the primary customer. Few companies could afford them. In the 70s they finally reached a stage of development where they were affordable. Government procurement was a critical part of the development of computers.
chrisBob 12y ago
Universities are an interesting case in patent reform. By many people's definitions they would be the patent trolls that we are trying to get rid of: They are not the inventors, and they don't make anything. As an engineering student at one of the schools on the list I like that my school is willing to pay to file a patent with my name on it even if any revenue would mostly go back to the school.
- hurin 12y ago
  >They are not the inventors, and they don't make anything. This is highly misleading if not down-right ignorant. Academic research is and has been absolutely necessary for most of the technologies we use today - patent's might not be the best way of financing said research, but we should be clear on the first part; before we roll the barrel on bad administrations and wasteful spending at universities. The toxic response to universities in general here on HN is rather astounding.
  - totalrobe 12y ago
    Agreed, and it sound like the type of comment made by a clever university student that hasn't experienced the typical soul crushing workplace.
- totalrobe 12y ago
  Well you're not explicitly wrong. Universities don't make things, but people at universities do. And universities are directly impacting inventors and researchers by providing education, professional networking and support, and infrastructure. To be entirely honest, I'm not familiar with all the channels that researchers can get funding, but to discount all these factors by saying universities don't make anything is kind of lame too.
kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
Read: It would harm the gravy train of patenting government funded research. Not good for Corporate U.
pskittle 12y ago
Anyone know why Harvard and Stanford not on the list?
- Apocryphon 12y ago
  Maybe their endowments are big enough for them to not care about having to resort to patents to pay their faculty?
  - josefresco 12y ago
    Ding ding ding!
  - will_brown 12y ago
    I would have thought you are correct. Harvard is sitting on $32B and Stanford $18.7B in tax-free endowments, the largest and 3rd largest endowments respectively. However, Yale is on the list and they have $20.7B (2nd largest). It does seem disingenuous for Yale to claim "[t]he prospect of substantially increased financial risk would discourage universities and other patent holders lacking extensive litigation resources from legitimately defending their patents." Not a whole lot of businesses are sitting on +$20B in cash period, much less +$20B tax free. As a side the top 10 school endowments in 2013 = ~$141B.[1] [1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2015/01/13/10-universities-with-the-largest-financial-endowments http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list...
CalRobert 12y ago
The universities are one of the biggest problems in all of this. They mostly exist to siphon funds away from the government and individuals (via subsidized loans) and spend lavish amounts on administration, all while claiming they can't come up with $34,000 a year for a professor. Let them rot. They've somehow convinced people their product is worth more than an individual's own drive in learning something, and artificially slow education.
- lutorm 12y ago
  Usually there is no funds transfer between university research and undergraduate education. Whatever issues you have with the value of undergraduate education doesn't really have any bearing on their function as research institutions.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  President of my university made $600k per year, sold off endowment land for private condo development at a bargain price (surprise, development corp was a gov crony corp) then spent the money on lavish dorms and frats only foreign students could afford. He also chaired a 2 billion research gov public grant fund where money was used for patenting research and (surprise) sold them to megacorps that were government cronies. He then claimed we had no money and had to jack tuition, and allow in banks to shill credit cards to students (surprise, he used to be on that bank's directors board). The loser is the student who has to pay ever increasing fees to afford these giant salaries and siphoning of endowment to cronies.
gr3yh47 12y ago
really misleading title. they are speaking only of currently pending legislation specifically, not patent reform in general.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Ar-Curunir 12y ago
  Yeah, and they're mainly talking about two specific proposals in the currently proposed bill too. I'm not sure what effect those two proposals would have, but instead of discussing said proposals the comments here are rambling about vaguely related issues.
  - hckr1292 12y ago
    Welcome to HN :-)
stealthlogic 12y ago
Bullshit.
nicklaf 12y ago
Eolas, one of the more notorious patent trolls to hit the web, began as a UCSF spinoff, founded by a UCSF employee in 1994. Eolas claimed to have invented the first interactive web browsing experience, and patented[1] the concept of interactive web browser plugins (applets). Doyle (founder of Eolas) first targeted Microsoft in what would turn into a long streak of litigation; he initially approached Microsoft with an offer to license his invention. The company declined, and Doyle sued. After drawn out legal proceedings, the parties reached a settlement, with a $30.4 million chunk [2] going to the University of California. Eolas went on to sue[3] 22 other of the largest internet companies for violating the same patent. Eolas wasn't claiming to have invented "interactive" computer programs in general, since this would be absurd. Eolas simply had the foresight to be first in line to file for a patent that combined the idea of interactivity (via external programs) with the nascent technology of web browsing, which was, to my knowledge, still "non-interactive" in 1994. That said, Eolas might not [4] have even been the first to demonstrate the idea of interactive web browsing. In fact, I'd be surprised if Engelbart's line of research at SRI in the `60's didn't establish prior art decades before. Regardless of whichever party happened to come up with an idea as simple as interactive web browsing, it hardly makes sense to give this party such sweeping power to extort the rest of the industry for the decade or two that follow. [1]https://www.google.com/patents/US5838906 https://www.google.com/patents/US5838906 [2]http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2007/10/10/microsofts-eolas-settlement-uc-gets-30-4m/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2007/10/10/microsofts-eo... [3]http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2009/10/06/after-beating-microsoft-eolas-sues-everyone-else/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2009/10/06/after-beating... [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1995JulAug/0446.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1995JulAug/0446...
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Just a nit: IIRC their patent didn't cover the idea of "interactivity", but something more along the line of "plugins", which is what the "external programs" refer to. Active-X is why they targeted Microsoft.
  - nicklaf 12y ago
    Thank you, you are correct--I should have been more careful. Just claiming the idea of plugins (and not interactive browsing in general) is less ridiculous, but still dangerous.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
It is worth to note here, that the universities don't speak against patent reform as such, but against special parts of the current reform. I am not familiar with the current reform, but problem is the fixation of so called "patent trolls". Many legitimate patent holders can be easily hurt by a reform that just is pleasing for the big corporations. When (for example) patent trolls are identified by the notion "don't produce the invention", than small inventors (and universities) can be hurt extremely, since small inventors have to sell their inventions to big corporations, when the production is out of their reach. Of course, the big corporations will be happy, when they can just steal such inventions and accuse the inventor as "patent-troll".
- tmarthal 12y ago
  Right. The one thing that (tangentially related) is the quote "The prospect of substantially increased financial risk would discourage universities and other patent holders lacking extensive litigation resources from legitimately defending their patents". Do universities really see themselves as the ones "lacking extensive litigation resources"? I think they don't understand the nature of 'small inventors'.
  - PythonicAlpha 12y ago
    I also can not see universities as big heroes here, but I think the whole patent discussion is so twisted and biased with factions that cover their real intentions, that one must be very careful what to support or judge what is a good development. Also in our country, we have a long list of "reforms" in different areas -- and "reform" sounds always positive, but in very few areas the so called "reforms" where directed in the right direction. I thus really got tired of "reforms". Oftentimes the word "reform" is used by factions that cover their real agenda ...
nickysielicki 12y ago
No surprise there, universities are patent trolls and they stand to lose from it. Fuck them. I'm a student at UW-Madison. WARF stands for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and they're responsible for whoring out patents held by the school. WARF was ranked the 5th worst patent troll by business insider in 2012. [1] [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-patent-holding-companies-2012-11#5-wisconsin-alumni-research-foundation-warf-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-patent-holding-compan...
Quanticles 12y ago
Many successful companies started as university startups working with federal funds. If the university was not able to patent, then the startups could never happen. Since startups are credited with being the innovation driver in the commercial world, killing off all of these startups would have a stifling effect on innovation in the US. A similar situation is with the small business innovative research program (SBIR). The main purpose of this program is to provide federal funds to perform research in order to help new small businesses grow, which in turn become large companies or get acquired by large companies. If all federal research dollars ended up resulting in no patents for the companies performing the research, then these startups wouldn't exist, and the purpose of the program would be destroyed. Everyone agrees that public dollars should result in public benefit. However, there is more public benefit to be had by creating lots of startups than there is by creating a bunch of non-patent publications. The US thrives due to it's technological advancement, which is driven by startups. Let's be careful to not destroy that benefit.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  There is a big leap between 'not being able to patent' and 'startup could never happen' that you need to explain. Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies. Many people use open source technologies to sell some other product. That's different from being in the business of building and selling an open source product. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You open source it, and don't patent it. You start selling the chips, and some Korean company immediately copies it and undercuts you on price. So what's your business model now?
    - logn 12y ago
      Many times the product being sold is so closely related to the actual open source software that they're indistinguishable. For instance, buying RedHat (support). Other times, you're buying the software, under a commercial license. And maybe the most common is, buying the software as a hosted service. In all these cases it's hard to undercut (and offer more value) than the company who has the most expertise and generally copy rights. However, your example is hardware and I don't know enough to comment on that.
logfromblammo 12y ago
Dear 144 Universities, I believe I am not alone in holding the opinion that public funds should not result in private gains. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 screwed the taxpaying public for your benefit. The public is not wrong to ask that it be reversed or corrected. If you wish to enjoy the benefits of private research, stop asking for the grant of public research funding. If you wish to enjoy the benefits of public research funding, stop asking for the grant of a limited monopoly. University administration is already treading upon thin ice by employing ever-increasing numbers of underpaid temporary and part-time employees to undertake one of the essential and indispensable functions of a university: teaching. At the same time, tuition charged to students has risen much higher than the rate of inflation, and student loan debt burdens have skyrocketed. Thus, I have no sympathy for you. The remedy already available to you for an increased cost in defense of patents is to produce fewer, more defensible patents. The truth of the Bayh-Dole legacy is that it has allowed the profit motive to corrupt science to an even greater extent than the "publish or perish" culture and the bias against negative results. You are no longer doing research for the sake of the advancement of knowledge, but research for the advancement of the university's revenues, and those motives produce vastly different results in practice. Furthermore, you are not rare and privileged centers of innovation. Advancement in technology has removed certain areas of research from the sole demesne of universities and national research laboratories to private corporations, or even to crowd-funded campaigns for a single individual. Doppler radar: invented before Bayh-Dole. Web browsers: Berners-Lee testified at the Eolas trial that he did not attempt to patent the web. Further evidence showed that Berners-Lee had previously described the U.S. patent system as "incentive for obfuscation" and that the threshold for patentability is set "ridiculously low." Yes, bringing that up as an example of university innovation was a great idea. Berners-Lee never tried to squeeze a dime out of his web browser, and the entire world has benefited from that generosity and foresight in far greater measure than he ever could have hoped to keep for himself. The Internet: invented before Bayh-Dole. Unpatented. CT scans: invented in 1971, before Bayh-Dole, in the UK. MRI: invented in 1971, before Bayh-Dole. SUNY chose not to patent it. FluMist (LAIV): I'm not entirely certain why vaccination is held out as an example of why university innovation should be patent protected, as Edward Jenner became a physician through apprenticeship, and the Royal Society did not even publish his initial reports. FluMist does not seem all that remarkable an innovation in light of the facts that other influenza vaccines exist, and the side effects of FluMist are more severe than for injected vaccines. GPS: This one was unequivocally driven by the U.S. DoD, and the first satellite launched before Bayh-Dole. The invention of more accurate timepieces have always, throughout the whole of history, been driven by navies, for whom that technology is the Holy Grail of navigation. Barcodes: This was invented by Woodland and Silver, based upon Morse code and motion picture soundtracks. Neither were employed by a university at the time. Their 1952 invention preceded Bayh-Dole. Could those universities not come up with examples of how PATENTED and DEFENDED innovations changed the world? Perhaps they might have also done us the honor of fact-checking their own claims to establish that their examples were also attributable to a university?
jkot 12y ago
Just to play devils advocate: One can be pretty innovative if he has to develop CPU without using XOR operation. Are there technologies developed solely as alternative to patent? I can think of PNG x GIF, OGG x MP3, Display Port X DVI... I would say that patent creates sort of monopol, which forces others to go with open solutions. Similar situation was when Windows caused Linux to emerge. Without patents we would be stacked with whatever comes. And that would be probably badly designed proprietary technology.
- woodman 12y ago
  > Similar situation was when Windows caused Linux to emerge. I know you are playing devil's advocate, but you don't actual think anybody could reasonably believe that do you? There is a reason it is called Linux and not Lindows :) > Without patents we would be stacked with whatever comes. Or we'd have a marketplace of ideas, where merit wins.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Actually, innovation through forced workarounds of patents has long been one of the reasons for patent systems. Though not originally stated explicitly, many jurists and economists over time have espoused this line of thought in support for patents.
  - cben 12y ago
    Can you give any pointers? It's plausible to claim patents do little harm because they can be worked around but saying they bring net benefit because the must be worked around feels bizarre.
em3rgent0rdr 12y ago
Intellectual property is not necessary for innovation and likely hinders progress. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
dkarapetyan 12y ago
Hold on a second. Research funded by tax payer money is not in the public domain?
fapjacks 12y ago
These people are fucking snakes. American universities are becoming part of the problem. If my tax dollars touch even the paper some research is printed on, it better be IMPOSSIBLE for that shit to sit behind a paywall or otherwise allow someone to restrict my ability to access or use it. THIS GOES FOR CORPORATE RESEARCH AS WELL which uses public funds (or taxpayer-funded subsidies) which is something nobody ever wants to talk about. I'd also like to see an explicit line item on a university budget where the money brought in through patents on research derived from NSF funds is piped back into the research program. It almost assuredly never is.

74 points by sinak2 12y ago

Are we sure this is about "innovation" and not revenue? http://www.nature.com/news/universities-struggle-to-make-patents-pay-1.13811 http://www.nature.com/news/universities-struggle-to-make-pat...

a3n 12y ago
Yes, s/US innovation/university revenue/g

rdl 12y ago

Wow. Universities trying to protect their franchise as businesses (even if they're non-profit, they pay salaries to the people making this pronouncement...), rather than advancing their core mission. Seems a lot like the publishers of journals. Yay! (Perhaps they can die in the same fire.)

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Shocked! I'm just shocked! Gambling at Rick's! (Since universities have an overwhelming interest in making tons of money, this is a typical non-story-story "dog bites man". The only thing of interest is the contortions the players will go through to keep the cronyism humming along. The joke above references the movie Casablanca. Everybody knew that there was a lot of money changing hands but the official position had to be that there was total surprise when it was discovered. If you can't see the money changing hands here, you're not paying attention)
- 001sky 12y ago
  Presumed credibility is the pretext for all con-artist scams. So hypocrisy is always a story...
Alex3917 12y ago
> Universities trying to protect their franchise as businesses rather than advancing their core mission. While I'm generally skeptical of Bayh-Dole, in part because it incentivizes universities to fake their research results, I also think their actual points may be valid. E.g. because the private sector has more money than them to spend on lawyers, this would leave them unable to enforce their I.P. rights, which would cause their patents to become basically worthless. Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property.
- bediger4000 12y ago
  undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property. In that case, Rightsholders become the new aristocracy: a patent or something is akin to a coat of arms.
- bsder 12y ago
  > Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property. Um, have you looked at the patent system lately? Only the super rich can afford the legal fees to enforce their patents, anyway. It doesn't matter if I have a patent if the big guys can just grind me into dust, anyway.

lettergram 12y ago

I'd like to say... I just attended a talk where one of the professors is using NSF funding to conduct research, then patent all of their work. Companies are then forced to pay the university based research group for use of their products and for further development. Personally, I cannot decide whether or not this is for the best or not. The research group can bring in more money to produce quality work. On the other hand, the tax payers are benefiting the creation of patented items they have to pay for? It seems really strange to me.

wahsd 12y ago
There is so much of that kind of thing going on. It's even worse when public money paid for "research" that resulted in a product that is then sold back to the government and then additional contracts are issued to improve, change, customize, or alter the product. All of which is funded at wildly overpriced rates without any controls or solid guidelines.
- abalone 12y ago
  Government procurement is an important part of how products are brought to market in our current system. That's not to say it's just or efficient at all. But it would be a mistake to view it as mere waste that ought to be excised without broader reform. Currently it fills the gap between the research and commercialization phases.
  - rebootthesystem 12y ago
    Prove it.
    - abalone 12y ago
      Ok: That thing you are typing on. The first computer was built in the early 50s funded by the Pentagon. They filled entire rooms and were hugely expensive. For the next 25 years or so the government was the primary customer. Few companies could afford them. In the 70s they finally reached a stage of development where they were affordable. Government procurement was a critical part of the development of computers.

chrisBob 12y ago

Universities are an interesting case in patent reform. By many people's definitions they would be the patent trolls that we are trying to get rid of: They are not the inventors, and they don't make anything. As an engineering student at one of the schools on the list I like that my school is willing to pay to file a patent with my name on it even if any revenue would mostly go back to the school.

hurin 12y ago
>They are not the inventors, and they don't make anything. This is highly misleading if not down-right ignorant. Academic research is and has been absolutely necessary for most of the technologies we use today - patent's might not be the best way of financing said research, but we should be clear on the first part; before we roll the barrel on bad administrations and wasteful spending at universities. The toxic response to universities in general here on HN is rather astounding.
- totalrobe 12y ago
  Agreed, and it sound like the type of comment made by a clever university student that hasn't experienced the typical soul crushing workplace.
totalrobe 12y ago
Well you're not explicitly wrong. Universities don't make things, but people at universities do. And universities are directly impacting inventors and researchers by providing education, professional networking and support, and infrastructure. To be entirely honest, I'm not familiar with all the channels that researchers can get funding, but to discount all these factors by saying universities don't make anything is kind of lame too.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

Read: It would harm the gravy train of patenting government funded research. Not good for Corporate U.

pskittle 12y ago

Anyone know why Harvard and Stanford not on the list?

Apocryphon 12y ago
Maybe their endowments are big enough for them to not care about having to resort to patents to pay their faculty?
- josefresco 12y ago
  Ding ding ding!
- will_brown 12y ago
  I would have thought you are correct. Harvard is sitting on $32B and Stanford $18.7B in tax-free endowments, the largest and 3rd largest endowments respectively. However, Yale is on the list and they have $20.7B (2nd largest). It does seem disingenuous for Yale to claim "[t]he prospect of substantially increased financial risk would discourage universities and other patent holders lacking extensive litigation resources from legitimately defending their patents." Not a whole lot of businesses are sitting on +$20B in cash period, much less +$20B tax free. As a side the top 10 school endowments in 2013 = ~$141B.[1] [1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2015/01/13/10-universities-with-the-largest-financial-endowments http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list...

CalRobert 12y ago

The universities are one of the biggest problems in all of this. They mostly exist to siphon funds away from the government and individuals (via subsidized loans) and spend lavish amounts on administration, all while claiming they can't come up with $34,000 a year for a professor. Let them rot. They've somehow convinced people their product is worth more than an individual's own drive in learning something, and artificially slow education.

lutorm 12y ago
Usually there is no funds transfer between university research and undergraduate education. Whatever issues you have with the value of undergraduate education doesn't really have any bearing on their function as research institutions.
pakled_engineer 12y ago
President of my university made $600k per year, sold off endowment land for private condo development at a bargain price (surprise, development corp was a gov crony corp) then spent the money on lavish dorms and frats only foreign students could afford. He also chaired a 2 billion research gov public grant fund where money was used for patenting research and (surprise) sold them to megacorps that were government cronies. He then claimed we had no money and had to jack tuition, and allow in banks to shill credit cards to students (surprise, he used to be on that bank's directors board). The loser is the student who has to pay ever increasing fees to afford these giant salaries and siphoning of endowment to cronies.

gr3yh47 12y ago

really misleading title. they are speaking only of currently pending legislation specifically, not patent reform in general.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Ar-Curunir 12y ago
Yeah, and they're mainly talking about two specific proposals in the currently proposed bill too. I'm not sure what effect those two proposals would have, but instead of discussing said proposals the comments here are rambling about vaguely related issues.
- hckr1292 12y ago
  Welcome to HN :-)

stealthlogic 12y ago

Bullshit.

nicklaf 12y ago

Eolas, one of the more notorious patent trolls to hit the web, began as a UCSF spinoff, founded by a UCSF employee in 1994. Eolas claimed to have invented the first interactive web browsing experience, and patented[1] the concept of interactive web browser plugins (applets). Doyle (founder of Eolas) first targeted Microsoft in what would turn into a long streak of litigation; he initially approached Microsoft with an offer to license his invention. The company declined, and Doyle sued. After drawn out legal proceedings, the parties reached a settlement, with a $30.4 million chunk [2] going to the University of California. Eolas went on to sue[3] 22 other of the largest internet companies for violating the same patent. Eolas wasn't claiming to have invented "interactive" computer programs in general, since this would be absurd. Eolas simply had the foresight to be first in line to file for a patent that combined the idea of interactivity (via external programs) with the nascent technology of web browsing, which was, to my knowledge, still "non-interactive" in 1994. That said, Eolas might not [4] have even been the first to demonstrate the idea of interactive web browsing. In fact, I'd be surprised if Engelbart's line of research at SRI in the `60's didn't establish prior art decades before. Regardless of whichever party happened to come up with an idea as simple as interactive web browsing, it hardly makes sense to give this party such sweeping power to extort the rest of the industry for the decade or two that follow. [1]https://www.google.com/patents/US5838906 https://www.google.com/patents/US5838906 [2]http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2007/10/10/microsofts-eolas-settlement-uc-gets-30-4m/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2007/10/10/microsofts-eo... [3]http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2009/10/06/after-beating-microsoft-eolas-sues-everyone-else/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2009/10/06/after-beating... [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1995JulAug/0446.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1995JulAug/0446...

throwawaykf05 12y ago
Just a nit: IIRC their patent didn't cover the idea of "interactivity", but something more along the line of "plugins", which is what the "external programs" refer to. Active-X is why they targeted Microsoft.
- nicklaf 12y ago
  Thank you, you are correct--I should have been more careful. Just claiming the idea of plugins (and not interactive browsing in general) is less ridiculous, but still dangerous.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

It is worth to note here, that the universities don't speak against patent reform as such, but against special parts of the current reform. I am not familiar with the current reform, but problem is the fixation of so called "patent trolls". Many legitimate patent holders can be easily hurt by a reform that just is pleasing for the big corporations. When (for example) patent trolls are identified by the notion "don't produce the invention", than small inventors (and universities) can be hurt extremely, since small inventors have to sell their inventions to big corporations, when the production is out of their reach. Of course, the big corporations will be happy, when they can just steal such inventions and accuse the inventor as "patent-troll".

tmarthal 12y ago
Right. The one thing that (tangentially related) is the quote "The prospect of substantially increased financial risk would discourage universities and other patent holders lacking extensive litigation resources from legitimately defending their patents". Do universities really see themselves as the ones "lacking extensive litigation resources"? I think they don't understand the nature of 'small inventors'.
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  I also can not see universities as big heroes here, but I think the whole patent discussion is so twisted and biased with factions that cover their real intentions, that one must be very careful what to support or judge what is a good development. Also in our country, we have a long list of "reforms" in different areas -- and "reform" sounds always positive, but in very few areas the so called "reforms" where directed in the right direction. I thus really got tired of "reforms". Oftentimes the word "reform" is used by factions that cover their real agenda ...

nickysielicki 12y ago

No surprise there, universities are patent trolls and they stand to lose from it. Fuck them. I'm a student at UW-Madison. WARF stands for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and they're responsible for whoring out patents held by the school. WARF was ranked the 5th worst patent troll by business insider in 2012. [1] [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-patent-holding-companies-2012-11#5-wisconsin-alumni-research-foundation-warf-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-patent-holding-compan...

Quanticles 12y ago

Many successful companies started as university startups working with federal funds. If the university was not able to patent, then the startups could never happen. Since startups are credited with being the innovation driver in the commercial world, killing off all of these startups would have a stifling effect on innovation in the US. A similar situation is with the small business innovative research program (SBIR). The main purpose of this program is to provide federal funds to perform research in order to help new small businesses grow, which in turn become large companies or get acquired by large companies. If all federal research dollars ended up resulting in no patents for the companies performing the research, then these startups wouldn't exist, and the purpose of the program would be destroyed. Everyone agrees that public dollars should result in public benefit. However, there is more public benefit to be had by creating lots of startups than there is by creating a bunch of non-patent publications. The US thrives due to it's technological advancement, which is driven by startups. Let's be careful to not destroy that benefit.

droopyEyelids 12y ago
There is a big leap between 'not being able to patent' and 'startup could never happen' that you need to explain. Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies. Many people use open source technologies to sell some other product. That's different from being in the business of building and selling an open source product. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You open source it, and don't patent it. You start selling the chips, and some Korean company immediately copies it and undercuts you on price. So what's your business model now?
  - logn 12y ago
    Many times the product being sold is so closely related to the actual open source software that they're indistinguishable. For instance, buying RedHat (support). Other times, you're buying the software, under a commercial license. And maybe the most common is, buying the software as a hosted service. In all these cases it's hard to undercut (and offer more value) than the company who has the most expertise and generally copy rights. However, your example is hardware and I don't know enough to comment on that.

logfromblammo 12y ago

Dear 144 Universities, I believe I am not alone in holding the opinion that public funds should not result in private gains. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 screwed the taxpaying public for your benefit. The public is not wrong to ask that it be reversed or corrected. If you wish to enjoy the benefits of private research, stop asking for the grant of public research funding. If you wish to enjoy the benefits of public research funding, stop asking for the grant of a limited monopoly. University administration is already treading upon thin ice by employing ever-increasing numbers of underpaid temporary and part-time employees to undertake one of the essential and indispensable functions of a university: teaching. At the same time, tuition charged to students has risen much higher than the rate of inflation, and student loan debt burdens have skyrocketed. Thus, I have no sympathy for you. The remedy already available to you for an increased cost in defense of patents is to produce fewer, more defensible patents. The truth of the Bayh-Dole legacy is that it has allowed the profit motive to corrupt science to an even greater extent than the "publish or perish" culture and the bias against negative results. You are no longer doing research for the sake of the advancement of knowledge, but research for the advancement of the university's revenues, and those motives produce vastly different results in practice. Furthermore, you are not rare and privileged centers of innovation. Advancement in technology has removed certain areas of research from the sole demesne of universities and national research laboratories to private corporations, or even to crowd-funded campaigns for a single individual. Doppler radar: invented before Bayh-Dole. Web browsers: Berners-Lee testified at the Eolas trial that he did not attempt to patent the web. Further evidence showed that Berners-Lee had previously described the U.S. patent system as "incentive for obfuscation" and that the threshold for patentability is set "ridiculously low." Yes, bringing that up as an example of university innovation was a great idea. Berners-Lee never tried to squeeze a dime out of his web browser, and the entire world has benefited from that generosity and foresight in far greater measure than he ever could have hoped to keep for himself. The Internet: invented before Bayh-Dole. Unpatented. CT scans: invented in 1971, before Bayh-Dole, in the UK. MRI: invented in 1971, before Bayh-Dole. SUNY chose not to patent it. FluMist (LAIV): I'm not entirely certain why vaccination is held out as an example of why university innovation should be patent protected, as Edward Jenner became a physician through apprenticeship, and the Royal Society did not even publish his initial reports. FluMist does not seem all that remarkable an innovation in light of the facts that other influenza vaccines exist, and the side effects of FluMist are more severe than for injected vaccines. GPS: This one was unequivocally driven by the U.S. DoD, and the first satellite launched before Bayh-Dole. The invention of more accurate timepieces have always, throughout the whole of history, been driven by navies, for whom that technology is the Holy Grail of navigation. Barcodes: This was invented by Woodland and Silver, based upon Morse code and motion picture soundtracks. Neither were employed by a university at the time. Their 1952 invention preceded Bayh-Dole. Could those universities not come up with examples of how PATENTED and DEFENDED innovations changed the world? Perhaps they might have also done us the honor of fact-checking their own claims to establish that their examples were also attributable to a university?

jkot 12y ago

Just to play devils advocate: One can be pretty innovative if he has to develop CPU without using XOR operation. Are there technologies developed solely as alternative to patent? I can think of PNG x GIF, OGG x MP3, Display Port X DVI... I would say that patent creates sort of monopol, which forces others to go with open solutions. Similar situation was when Windows caused Linux to emerge. Without patents we would be stacked with whatever comes. And that would be probably badly designed proprietary technology.

woodman 12y ago
> Similar situation was when Windows caused Linux to emerge. I know you are playing devil's advocate, but you don't actual think anybody could reasonably believe that do you? There is a reason it is called Linux and not Lindows :) > Without patents we would be stacked with whatever comes. Or we'd have a marketplace of ideas, where merit wins.
throwawaykf05 12y ago
Actually, innovation through forced workarounds of patents has long been one of the reasons for patent systems. Though not originally stated explicitly, many jurists and economists over time have espoused this line of thought in support for patents.
- cben 12y ago
  Can you give any pointers? It's plausible to claim patents do little harm because they can be worked around but saying they bring net benefit because the must be worked around feels bizarre.

em3rgent0rdr 12y ago

Intellectual property is not necessary for innovation and likely hinders progress. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

dkarapetyan 12y ago

Hold on a second. Research funded by tax payer money is not in the public domain?

fapjacks 12y ago

These people are fucking snakes. American universities are becoming part of the problem. If my tax dollars touch even the paper some research is printed on, it better be IMPOSSIBLE for that shit to sit behind a paywall or otherwise allow someone to restrict my ability to access or use it. THIS GOES FOR CORPORATE RESEARCH AS WELL which uses public funds (or taxpayer-funded subsidies) which is something nobody ever wants to talk about. I'd also like to see an explicit line item on a university budget where the money brought in through patents on research derived from NSF funds is piped back into the research program. It almost assuredly never is.