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Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

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Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#61

Post by throwawaykf05 »

jkot wrote: post #45

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…

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.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#62

Post by logn »

rayiner wrote: post #48
droopyEyelids wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

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.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#63

Post by logfromblammo »

rayiner wrote: post #48
droopyEyelids wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

That could happen even if you did patent it.

Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You spend 3 years securing a patent and bringing the product to market. You discover that some Korean company copied the reference implementation found in your patent application. You also discover that the Chinese manufacturer you licensed to produce your product has been running ghost shifts to make low-quality knockoffs. Bunnie dips the chips in fuming nitric acid and posts the photos to the web. You sue to enforce your patent and discover that the best you can do is to prevent x% of the knockoffs from entering the US as discrete parts in containerized shipping through the largest ports. Your amp design somehow shows up in dozens of low-end consumer products anyway. You silently rage into your ramen noodles, and your lawyer stops answering your phone calls the same day.

You focus on support services, quality assurance, and brand identity. You seize the center of the market by determining what the product is. Notice how well ARM does without a chip fab. Why do companies pay for ARM licenses (oops, licences--they're a UK company), when they could make OpenCores chips? Because the other chips are not ARM chips. They might not use the ARM instruction set. They aren't the same as what's in your iPad. When people lack the ability to fully comprehend what it is they are buying, they invariably rely at least partially upon brand reputation. Defending your trademark is far more important in this context than defending a patent.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#64

Post by rayiner »

themartorana wrote: post #59
rayiner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ir…

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…

You're mixing up two issues here.

Say someone holds a gun to your head and forces you to sell your house for $500,000. Your neighbor's almost identical house sold for $490,000 just a few weeks ago.

Do you agree that both points can be true at the same time:

1) It's wrong to hold a gun to someone's head to force them to sell a house.

2) $500,000 is a reasonable price for the house.

Now, realize that the two issues are independent. You've got a gun to your head, no matter what price you get for the house, and the price for the house is reasonable or not whether or not you've got a gun to your head.

Now, so long as you support government subsidization of R&D, you're stuck with (1). Your dollars are paying for something and you have no choice or control. But your argument isn't that the government shouldn't support R&D with public money, so your beef must really be (2)--you think the government is getting a bad deal for the money. Whether the deal is good or bad can be evaluated standing alone.

Objectively, you're right--the public should get some sort of discount. But it's also true that it's unreasonable to demand that the technology be released freely. Just because you invest the money to develop something does not mean the developer should get zero upside on the arrangement. That's not how it works in any other context.

This isn't a theoretical nit-pick. Practically, the government is just another investor. If you constrain the government to only offering unreasonably bad deals, then you'll only attract bad prospects that have no other options.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#65

Post by throwawaykf05 »

ganeumann wrote: post #57
abalone wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invent…

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 subsidi…

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.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#66

Post by refurb »

abalone wrote: post #33
lettergram wrote: post #4

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…

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 invent…

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.

I work in the biotech industry and from my perspective, I don't see a problem at all with private companies getting rich off of the development of public research. Keep in mind that the company is fronting the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to commercialize a product. Shouldn't they profit off it?

Also, the few example of drugs that have been discovered in an academic setting, the universities got wealthy off of the royalty rights. Hell, Northwestern sold a portion of those rights to Lyrica for $700M cash.[1]

[1]http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/12/lyric...

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#67

Post by bsder »

Alex3917 wrote: post #18
rdl wrote: post #3

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.)

> 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 woul…

> 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.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#68

Post by hckr1292 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #21
gr3yh47 wrote: post #15

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

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.

Welcome to HN :-)

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#69

Post by phkahler »

Quanticles wrote: post #38

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)…

>> 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.

No, the research would still go on. Much of it is funded by government grants and that would still continue. The results of the research would be published and anyone could make use of it. That simplifies everything and results in more competition to commercialize things.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#70

Post by throwawaykf05 »

nicklaf wrote: post #22

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…

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.
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