
Intel to Universities: No Patents, Please, Just Open Source - hendi_
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/09/12/intel-to-universities-no-patents-please-just-open-source/
======
noonespecial
"So how did they finally fix the patent system, Grandpa?"

"They didn't. Nobody could. Over the years, people just got tired of the
bullshit and quit using it."

~~~
nextparadigms
The problem is they still go after open-source software with patent
infringement claims (look at Microsoft).

------
0x12
The catch here is of course that intel is a hardware company.

In 2010 alone intel received 1600+ patents:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_paten...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_patent_recipients)

If intel wants to stop the patent madness they could start with removing
themselves from that top 10.

~~~
RexRollman
Companies almost have to own patents these day; for defensive reasons if
nothing else.

~~~
rbanffy
The problem is patent trolls are immune to this kind of defense.

------
jamieb
I have difficulty reading that page, with light grey text on a grey, "hand-
drawn", graph-paper background.

~~~
Dylan16807
Something has gone wrong with your rendering. The text is supposed to be on a
white background. #555555 text looks just fine like that.

Edit: It may have been a server error but only to some people? It's unclear
from the comments on the site.

------
brlewis
The money quote: _In search of better margins, Intel hopes to beef up its
software practice to combat increasingly thin profit margins from chip sales._

Intel has plenty of large competitors in the software area. Still, they expect
to make more money thanks to the existence of free software. Contrast this to
those who say there's no way to make money if others can copy you.

------
tibbon
The rest of the world to Intel: No Patents, Just Open Source...

------
maxharris
How would universities get paid for the research they facilitate if this were
the standard practice? My university would have to close or curtail its
activities in nearly unimaginable ways without the billions of dollars that
the research foundation has generated honestly (via things brought into
existence by UW researchers: without their minds, their work/results/products
would not exist). Incidentally, my university also sued Intel recently over a
patent dispute and won.

~~~
_delirium
The amount of money generated for universities by patents on CS/engineering
research is quite small, though. The total for all fields in 2009 (according
to an unfortunately paywalled report: [http://chronicle.com/article/Table-
Licensing-Revenue-and/125...](http://chronicle.com/article/Table-Licensing-
Revenue-and/125729/)) was $1.8 billion, of which the vast majority went to a
handful of schools for blockbuster biotech patents (e.g., NYU has been pulling
in $100m+ annually from the Remicade patents). I would be surprised if UW non-
bio patents are bringing in more than low-single-digit millions, i.e. not much
compared to what they get in corporate donations, not to mention NSF and DARPA
grants, and even the state subsidy and tuition.

The former Dean of Georgia Tech's CS dept quotes John Hurt from the NSF as
claiming: "Of 3,200 universities, perhaps six have made significant amounts of
money from their intellectual property rights." I don't think there have been
_any_ blockbuster university (non-bio) tech patents since the Akamai (MIT) /
PageRank (Stanford) pair ten years ago.

~~~
cube13
This is really more of an issue with how universities value the research, I
think. Most of the time, there isn't a very clear immediate business benefit,
so they're willing to part with the IP for very little money.

Prime case is the Mosaic browser IP and the University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign. All the research was done by the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications for the university, and when it was completed and released,
didn't really bother to try to get anything from it. The university basically
sold the rights to an offshoot company for a very small fee-I believe it was
under $1 million, and didn't see any money from it after that.

~~~
_delirium
Part of that is a deliberate strategy on the part of some universities, based
on a guess that they'll get more in donations from corporations, spinoffs, and
successful alumni voluntarily, than they would get by being tight-fisted with
IP. Plus, it increases the university's prestige to have their stuff involved
in more products, and their alumni involved in more successful ventures, so
there's a cost to doing anything that would complicate stuff up-front. The
goal is to get it on the back-end instead: don't hassle the not-yet-successful
startup, but if they IPO, nag to see if they're willing to kick in a $50m
building or write you into their will.

I'm not sure which version of the calculus is right, but it's at least
plausible to me that universities stand to lose more in donations/prestige
than they'd gain in royalties if they took stricter approaches to patent
licensing.

