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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 th

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.
      - rebootthesystem 12y ago
        Oh, please.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
williamstein 12y ago
I'm a University professor who does much work funded by the NSF (millions of dollars), whose university (Univ of Washington) is on that list. My tech transfer office tried hard to make me keep some of my software work closed source and succeeded for years (see http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-lets-clear-some.html http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-l...). In December I realized to my surprise that some of my NSF grants that funded my work had an explicit open source requirement. This was entirely because of a new requirement in a specific NSF program -- search open source at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14520/nsf14520.htm http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14520/nsf14520.htm to see it. This was something that a program officer (Dan Katz) at NSF added a few years ago; I asked him about it a few weeks ago when he visited UW, and he said it was inspired by when he worked as a researcher at Caltech and he wanted to open source his work and used grant requirements to do so. Granting agencies like NSF can have a massive impact on ensuring the work they fund with tax payer money is made available to tax payers for free. The NSF SI2 program is a rare new example of exactly this happening in practice today. I couldn't find any other similar NSF requirements for other NSF programs, but I am going to hold this up as an example whenever I have a chance to advise NSF in the future. Little by little things may change.
- jordigh 12y ago
  Wait, I don't understand. Are the non-free parts of SMC there because the university demands that they stay non-free or because you want them to? Does this particular grant involve any of the non-free code you've already written? Also, the grant speaks about releasing software. Do they consider it a "release" if you only give web access to the frontend, but keep all of the backend private?
  - wickedlogic 12y ago
    Sadly, the open sourcing of software does not address the patent aspect. It makes subversion easy... perhaps common place, but is probably not really enough.
    - tankenmate 12y ago
rhino369 12y ago
So the NSF should attach strings to the funding.
abalone 12y ago
The elephant in the room is that taxpayers are subsidizing private tech industry that gets to keep all the profits from commercializations of public research, save for the pittance they sometimes pay for tech transfer licenses. There is a bit a selective outrage going on here. How dare those universities try to profit from taxpayer research! The nerve! Meanwhile tech companies make billions of profits on these inventions without paying a dime back to the government, apart from the taxes that all companies pay. At least the pittance that some pay back to universities via tech transfer helps support further public research. The government grants don't always cover the full cost of labs and professorships.
- vermontdevil 12y ago
  One reason why grants don't always cover the full cost of labs/professorships is because Universities would grab a significant % of the grant into "general overhead" fund. Just another source of revenue for the University as a whole.
- ganeumann 12y ago
  As a taxpayer I'm certainly entitled to think that the work I am paying for, I own. Just as in almost any other business relationship. As far as I can see, if a professor runs a lab, he or she gets grants to fund it. If they can not get grants, they don't run a lab. The profits from university patents and tech transfer feed the general fund, they don't generally all go back to academic work. That general fund subsidizes many things, like the administrators' and football coach's salaries and the glitzy new student union. I don't really want to subsidize those things. If you really want the NSF-funded work to subsidize more research, then the NSF should own and license the patents. But personally, I'd rather the research be free and have it benefit society.
  - throwawaykf05 12y ago
    How much of the total government budget did your taxes contribute to? And how much of that budget was assigned to fund research? How many people share your sentiment that your tax money should benefit corporations (domestic and foreign) that don't pay their fare share of taxes? And how many of these even would have agreed to fund this research due to their political biases (think anti-vaxxers and vaccine research)? Would all your collective tax contributions give you a say in this matter? I don't think this issue is nearly as easy as "publicly funded research should be free". Additionally, is it better (along any number of metrics) to make it free and let existing companies use it, or patent it and give a startup a better chance of commercializing it? (If there are any studies on this question I'd love to read them.) >But personally, I'd rather the research be free and have it benefit society. "Benefit society" sounds nice in theory, but it glosses over an important and long-standing economic problem, that of free-riders. Which is exactly what grandparent comment refers to.
rayiner 12y ago
Consider Kickstarter. Just because the public pays for the development of the product, does that mean the product should be free (or at least, sold at the cost of materials)? I call this the "MIT model" of R&D. MIT, moreso than Stanford, is famous for participating in the military-industrial-educational complex. It's anything but ideologically pure, but it's also been amazingly successful at developing "hard" technology.
- dwg 12y ago
  Kickstarter is considerably different: 1. Donors are able to choose which projects to contribute to. 2. There is often a direct benefit associated with the contribution, such as a discount, advanced release, or special version of the product. IMO Contributing to a Kickstarter project is much more like shopping than it is like paying taxes or making charitable donations.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Your (2) is a valid point. The public should get some sort of discount when public funding leads to patentable technology, such as a shortened term. But (1) is neither here nor there. A necessary principle of Kickstarter is that the developer of a product should be able to keep some upside from doing the actual work, even when other people pay for the development.[1] Whether that investment is public or private is irrelevant. [1] A startup would also never take an investment where the VC committed to paying all development costs, but demanded 100% of the profits in return.
    - themartorana 12y ago
      Whether that investment is public or private is irrelevant. It's not at all irrelevant. With Kickstarter, the private transaction is between two parties that are fully aware of the terms of the transaction, and explicitly agree to them. In the case of taxpayer money paying for university R&D that is then privatized and locked away, I find that repugnant. I am a party to the transaction that does not at all agree with the way this works, that does not at all agree with my money flowing to this private company for no benefit to me or the public or the society in which I am a participant.

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.
    - rebootthesystem 12y ago
      Oh, please.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

williamstein 12y ago

I'm a University professor who does much work funded by the NSF (millions of dollars), whose university (Univ of Washington) is on that list. My tech transfer office tried hard to make me keep some of my software work closed source and succeeded for years (see http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-lets-clear-some.html http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-l...). In December I realized to my surprise that some of my NSF grants that funded my work had an explicit open source requirement. This was entirely because of a new requirement in a specific NSF program -- search open source at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14520/nsf14520.htm http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14520/nsf14520.htm to see it. This was something that a program officer (Dan Katz) at NSF added a few years ago; I asked him about it a few weeks ago when he visited UW, and he said it was inspired by when he worked as a researcher at Caltech and he wanted to open source his work and used grant requirements to do so. Granting agencies like NSF can have a massive impact on ensuring the work they fund with tax payer money is made available to tax payers for free. The NSF SI2 program is a rare new example of exactly this happening in practice today. I couldn't find any other similar NSF requirements for other NSF programs, but I am going to hold this up as an example whenever I have a chance to advise NSF in the future. Little by little things may change.

jordigh 12y ago
Wait, I don't understand. Are the non-free parts of SMC there because the university demands that they stay non-free or because you want them to? Does this particular grant involve any of the non-free code you've already written? Also, the grant speaks about releasing software. Do they consider it a "release" if you only give web access to the frontend, but keep all of the backend private?
- wickedlogic 12y ago
  Sadly, the open sourcing of software does not address the patent aspect. It makes subversion easy... perhaps common place, but is probably not really enough.
  - tankenmate 12y ago

rhino369 12y ago

So the NSF should attach strings to the funding.

abalone 12y ago

The elephant in the room is that taxpayers are subsidizing private tech industry that gets to keep all the profits from commercializations of public research, save for the pittance they sometimes pay for tech transfer licenses. There is a bit a selective outrage going on here. How dare those universities try to profit from taxpayer research! The nerve! Meanwhile tech companies make billions of profits on these inventions without paying a dime back to the government, apart from the taxes that all companies pay. At least the pittance that some pay back to universities via tech transfer helps support further public research. The government grants don't always cover the full cost of labs and professorships.

vermontdevil 12y ago
One reason why grants don't always cover the full cost of labs/professorships is because Universities would grab a significant % of the grant into "general overhead" fund. Just another source of revenue for the University as a whole.
ganeumann 12y ago
As a taxpayer I'm certainly entitled to think that the work I am paying for, I own. Just as in almost any other business relationship. As far as I can see, if a professor runs a lab, he or she gets grants to fund it. If they can not get grants, they don't run a lab. The profits from university patents and tech transfer feed the general fund, they don't generally all go back to academic work. That general fund subsidizes many things, like the administrators' and football coach's salaries and the glitzy new student union. I don't really want to subsidize those things. If you really want the NSF-funded work to subsidize more research, then the NSF should own and license the patents. But personally, I'd rather the research be free and have it benefit society.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  How much of the total government budget did your taxes contribute to? And how much of that budget was assigned to fund research? How many people share your sentiment that your tax money should benefit corporations (domestic and foreign) that don't pay their fare share of taxes? And how many of these even would have agreed to fund this research due to their political biases (think anti-vaxxers and vaccine research)? Would all your collective tax contributions give you a say in this matter? I don't think this issue is nearly as easy as "publicly funded research should be free". Additionally, is it better (along any number of metrics) to make it free and let existing companies use it, or patent it and give a startup a better chance of commercializing it? (If there are any studies on this question I'd love to read them.) >But personally, I'd rather the research be free and have it benefit society. "Benefit society" sounds nice in theory, but it glosses over an important and long-standing economic problem, that of free-riders. Which is exactly what grandparent comment refers to.

rayiner 12y ago

Consider Kickstarter. Just because the public pays for the development of the product, does that mean the product should be free (or at least, sold at the cost of materials)? I call this the "MIT model" of R&D. MIT, moreso than Stanford, is famous for participating in the military-industrial-educational complex. It's anything but ideologically pure, but it's also been amazingly successful at developing "hard" technology.

dwg 12y ago
Kickstarter is considerably different: 1. Donors are able to choose which projects to contribute to. 2. There is often a direct benefit associated with the contribution, such as a discount, advanced release, or special version of the product. IMO Contributing to a Kickstarter project is much more like shopping than it is like paying taxes or making charitable donations.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Your (2) is a valid point. The public should get some sort of discount when public funding leads to patentable technology, such as a shortened term. But (1) is neither here nor there. A necessary principle of Kickstarter is that the developer of a product should be able to keep some upside from doing the actual work, even when other people pay for the development.[1] Whether that investment is public or private is irrelevant. [1] A startup would also never take an investment where the VC committed to paying all development costs, but demanded 100% of the profits in return.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    Whether that investment is public or private is irrelevant. It's not at all irrelevant. With Kickstarter, the private transaction is between two parties that are fully aware of the terms of the transaction, and explicitly agree to them. In the case of taxpayer money paying for university R&D that is then privatized and locked away, I find that repugnant. I am a party to the transaction that does not at all agree with the way this works, that does not at all agree with my money flowing to this private company for no benefit to me or the public or the society in which I am a participant.