
Universities have turned over hundreds of patents to patent trolls - doener
https://medium.com/@yardenkatz/universities-have-turned-over-hundreds-of-patents-to-patent-trolls-99d5cdec1d8a#.vulqukskk
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ron0c
You will notice that University of Wisconsin Madison is not on that list. This
is because Dr. Harry Steenbock
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Steenbock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Steenbock))
with fantastic vision started the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF
[http://www.warf.org/about-us/about-us.cmsx](http://www.warf.org/about-
us/about-us.cmsx)) where discoveries made at UW get the help of the team of
lawyers to guide through the patent process while the royalties paid then go
back to the university. Starting with his discovery on fortifying food with
Vitamin D by method of ultraviolet light in 1925.

WARF is an enormous success at UW and last year alone contributed over $100
million back to the university.

~~~
jessaustin
If one were a cynic, one might suspect that UW is just playing the troll
itself. Assuming that it isn't, what controls are in place that help UW avoid
registering and then seeking royalties on trivial patents? If administrators
decided that WARF should instead contribute $200M yearly, wouldn't the
resulting patent inflation carry the whole operation into troll territory?

~~~
shagie
One can easily browse the patents and newly submitted inventions that are
registered to the WARF: [http://www.warf.org/technologies/new-
patents.cmsx](http://www.warf.org/technologies/new-patents.cmsx) \- the
sidebar organizes them by category.

The intention is more of "hey entrepreneurs, we've got this technology
developed in academia - if you see a business model based on this, talk to us
so you can use it."

Of note, if you follow the 'technologies - information technology - software'
path, you'll note that none of these are actually patents. They're listed as
"technologies" instead.

There do appear to be some patents listed... things like low profile, ultra
wide band antenna and wideband transceiver for antenna array.

All that said, one of the distinctions between the patent troll and the warf
is that of "the warf is seeking business partnerships for people to use
technologies, inventions, and patents developed at the university of madison"
and the troll is "buying patents from one party and suing another party for
royalties." The business model for the two is completely different.

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Panino
Related: publicly funded research that leads to privately held patents results
in a form of double taxation. The consumer pays taxes to create the product,
then turns around and pays patent-level pricing to buy/use it.

~~~
mathattack
And we have to pay to get access to the research in private journals. (And pay
faculty salaries to do peer reviews for the journal)

It's at least Triple taxation.

Quadruple taxation for the underpaid grad students working on the research to
get their degree?

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yladiz
It makes me sad that my alma mater is listed as one of the top 10. If you're
like me and see that, forward this article to the provost of your school or
the dean of your college and let them know you're not OK with this as an
alumni. Of course there's no "take backsies" but at least we can try to do
something to stop the spread of patents to patent trolls.

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URSpider94
I would like to know more. My experience with university license teams has
been that they rarely sell patents to anyone -- for the most part, they
provide a license. In the deals I've been involved with, the license
specifically requires that the licensee be practicing the patent within some
period, or the license is canceled.

I'm curious if these represent cases where the universities sold patents to
practicing entities, and then they got shuffled over to trolls in liquidation
sales or re-orgs?

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devilsavocado
The fact that you can just sell patents always seemed a little bit off to me.
Does that really further the purpose of a patent? I understand that we can't
just ban the selling of patents, but there must be a better way to avoid
situations like these where the patent is not used to reward the innovator.

~~~
Grishnakh
If I were dictator, I'd definitely ban the selling of patents.

I'd also ban the assigning of patents to corporations; they would only be
owned by the original people who filed them. So corporations could only
benefit from those patents as long as the patent-holders were employees (or at
least one of the patent-holders if there's multiple), by being allowed to use
the patent license-free.

>I understand that we can't just ban the selling of patents

Why not? We can ban anything we want as long as it's not unconstitutional. The
question is if a ban of something has more negative effects than positive. I
don't see how it would here.

~~~
pitaj
Just get rid of patents in general then.

------
gravypod
The patent that Linus was on for anyone interested:
[http://www.google.com/patents/US20100169613](http://www.google.com/patents/US20100169613)

------
jxramos
Ding dang UC's letting us down! I really enjoy reading articles that are data
driven. I feel like the frequency of such things is on the increase and
something just feels good about that showing up in journalism with data I
assume can be openly verified with. Someone just posted some interesting data
driven analysis of OkCupid data that was pretty intriguing.

~~~
diogenescynic
The UCs really aren't what they used to be. The Chancellor at UC Davis had her
own students pepper sprayed for a peaceful protest and had a paid board seat
at Devry. The UCs are run by crooks and they continue to rip off their
students. I regret giving my money to the UC system and if I have kids, will
guarantee to send them somewhere else.

~~~
abpavel
The primary motivation of a student is to attain a systemic improvement in a
body of knowledge, but also to open ones eyes to the realities of the world
around us, including socializing and being pepper sprayed. UC is great at all
of those. That's why there are so many Nobel prize winners there.

~~~
bogomipz
Can I ask what does it cost for a resident that is not a dependent?

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tzs
The author seems to be implicitly assuming that Intellectual Ventures is
_just_ a patent troll.

IV's business is much more than that. Besides buying outside commercially
developed patents (similar to what a troll does), they also employ scientists
and engineers directly to develop new things that IV can patent, and they fund
outside researchers in exchange for patent rights.

At least some of the university patents IV has acquired were through such
deals, where IV provides funding for the academic research that leads to the
patent, and then IV gets commercialization rights to the patent, with the
university getting a cut of any licensing fees IV gets from those patents.

------
agjacobson
It's really outrageous. University research publications behind paywalls, but
paid for by us. Now patents, the development paid for by us, in the hands of
trolls. And public universities involved. This privatization is outrageous.

~~~
rayiner
Just because university research is paid for by the public does not mean that
all the results should be in the public domain. It would be absurd, for
example, for a VC to demand 100% of a company's equity in return for providing
the funding necessary to keep the lights on while a product is developed.

There is a long history of innovation happening from universities spinning-off
patented technology into private companies. _E.g._ what John Hennessy did with
MIPS. It's a great model. If you get rid of it, you'd turn universities into
ivory-tower ghettos where researchers would only go if they had no desire to
make money.

~~~
Grishnakh
VCs aren't spending _my_ money. Universities are, because they're subsidized
by taxes. If they want to make money which says in private hands, they can do
it with their _own_ money, not taxpayer funds. Universities were never meant
to be profit-generating entities, but institutions of learning. The people in
universities should be happy to have a cushy, tenured academic job; people who
have a serious "desire to make money" (beyond that of a professor's salary,
which is both good and very stable) don't belong at universities at all, they
should be working in the private sector.

~~~
rayiner
> VCs aren't spending my money.

Money is money. From the perspective of the incentives of the hypothetical
researcher, it's irrelevant where the money comes from. If the government
demands 100% equity in return for investment, it just becomes the least
competitive VC on the market, doomed to fund the least compelling projects.

> The people in universities should be happy to have a cushy, tenured academic
> job; people who have a serious "desire to make money" (beyond that of a
> professor's salary, which is both good and very stable) don't belong at
> universities at all, they should be working in the private sector.

Strongly disagree. One of the reasons the U.S. has hands-down the best
engineering universities in the world is because of the fluid boundary between
academia and the private sector. Filling universities with people who just
want a cushy academic job is a great way to make academic research completely
irrelevant.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I disagree on least compelling. Lots of the best stuff coming out of DARPA and
NSF research is either not commercialized or could allow for competing
implementations while giving innovater first-mover advantage. Smart people
interested in impacting the world will do so regardless of whether they can
start a business. Many of the great ones actually just continue as researchers
since that's their passion.

~~~
rayiner
First mover advantage has little value in the industries DARPA and NSF find.
And both DARPA and NSF (by design) allow companies receiving grants to patent
the results of their research.

That is not to say that _all_ DARPA and NSF-funded research should be
patented. To the extent the research is more fundamental and less applied it
shouldn't be. But DARPA and NSF fund both theoretical and applied research and
so do universities.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I know they fund the companies. I was just saying the people getting that
funding often work for universities that wouldve built it any way whether a
patent or not. Lots of top-tier results come from that. So, I dont think
switching to that model exclusively would make less compelling results. It
might reduce the number or change university/private ratio of where
innovations come from.

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bogomipz
I have a question, aren't some of these public universities in some part
subsidized by tax payer money at the state level?

If this is true, should these patents be exclusive domain of these school's to
profit from exclusively? It seems to me that selling patents to these
litigious entities impedes progress that might otherwise benefit the same tax
paying public that helped underwrite at least some of the research.

Am I looking at this wrong?

Maybe there are lots of other nuances that my oversimplification doesn't
account for. I would be curious to hear what those are if so.

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the_watcher
How did IV get its hands on a patent filed by Linus Torvalds?

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Transmeta? Linus worked for that company a few years.

~~~
the_watcher
Of course. Momentary blank where I forgot that people get patents while in the
employ of companies.

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vmarsy
How can we guarantee those patents went from the schools directly into IV ?

What if the school first sold it to a non-patent-troll 3rd party, and then
that 3rd party transferred it to IV?

Is there a way to follow the history of a particular patent?

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the_watcher
Small clarification: I see that UT is listed as the system, but that's not
used for University of California. Is it just Cal? Or the whole system?

~~~
Amorymeltzer
It's the whole system. The UC schools are under direct administration of the
UC Office of the President, whereas my understanding of Texas is that the
University of Texas System schools are independently-run.

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mathattack
Tax dollars at work!

