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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

#51

Post by pakled_engineer »

CalRobert wrote: post #10

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 artif…

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.

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

#53

Post by rebootthesystem »

rayiner wrote: post #39
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…

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" technol…

Not even close to a fair comparison. On Kickstarter you choose what you want to back and, if all goes well, you get something in exchange. And, no, you are not buying a piece of the business or the IP. And you know this before you pledge.

I can't choose not to have my tax money used for grants that keep the results of the research private. I can't even choose what research program, university or researcher it goes to.

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

#54

Post by rayiner »

dwg wrote: post #50
rayiner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" technol…

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.

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.

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

#55

Post by woodman »

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…

> 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.

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

#56

Post by rayiner »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" technol…

Not even close to a fair comparison. On Kickstarter you choose what you want to back and, if all goes well, you get something in exchange. And, no, you are not buying a piece of the business or the IP. And you know this before you pledge. I can't choose not to have my tax money used for grants that keep the results of the research private. I can't even choose what research program, university or researcher it goes to…

The question is: is it reasonable for researchers to keep the upside when someone else pays for the cost of development? Why does choice matter to answering the question?

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

#57

Post by ganeumann »

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…

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.

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

#58

Post by bediger4000 »

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…

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.

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

#59

Post by themartorana »

rayiner wrote: post #54
dwg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 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.

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

#60

Post by fapjacks »

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.
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