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Comment by cetra3 | Hacker News Reader

> Sea-thru is protected by a registered patent owned by Carmel Ltd the Economic Co. of the Haifa University and its subsidiary SeaErra

Looks like they are going to monetise this technology at some point given the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. This is not wrong. But it feels like a PR exercise dressed up as something academic which is a little creepy.

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It is not unusual in academia to patent all innovations with potential commercial applications. At least in Canada, universities typically have innovation centres whose main job is encouraging and helping professors, graduate students, and other researchers patent their innovations and commercialize them (e.g. by licensing the patent). It is not sinister, it is normal procedure in academia.

And the funding for the research that allowed for this invention was paid for by? The inventor? Or the government?

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If the university is publicly funded, then it is the public who actually paid for the research.

Really?

Some professors have “hard money” jobs where the university covers most/all of their salary; startup packages that are meant to help you get a grant are pretty common, as are fellowships or TAships for students.

However, I don’t think most universities cover much of the actual research expenses.

As for the patent, most places offer a split with the inventor, and may not patent everything; they have a right of first refusal though.

Yes, this is ridiculous especially considering that a patent gives the holder a monopoly, stifling further innovation, which is exactly the opposite of the purpose of academia.

Typically, if it is in collaboration with private sector (i.e. a company is providing the funding), said company will retain the intellectual property produced by the research. If it is government funds, university (itself a government organization) will have partial ownership of the intellectual property. So the government pays for research, the researcher does research. The researcher and the government (via university) own the fruits of the research together.

It is also notable that in Canada (almost?) all large research universities are public institutions: University of Toronto, McGill, Queen's, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, etc. I imagine the calculus would have been different if the university was itself a private corporation.

All universities seems to be patenting the hell out of their research these days.

> This is not wrong.

It is if the research was paid for by the public.

If a Canadian university invents a new image filter that will make fifty million dollars for companies whose products include image filters, but all such companies are foreign (instagram, apple, adobe, facebook...) why should the Canadian taxpayer give it to them for free?

It's not like Instagram are going to pass the cost of licensing on to users.

If you have a mechanism for making the patent freely available to Canadians only that's fine.

But if the taxpayers who funded the research have to license the technology to use it, that's just robbery.

I'm not sure taxpayers are covering all the costs. When I was a kid I used to golf at a golf course that was owned by the county. You still had to pay to play there. People that don't play golf pay very little for the course to exist, but they are still paying something.

Maybe this is "robbery" (which is not what that word means), but you still get the benefits of living near open space (no car-owners living there, trees turning CO2 into oxygen, bees pollinating your flowers), etc. All in all, it doesn't seem too bad. (It is $26 a round, btw.)

Research universities fill a similar role. They are good to have around, even if you can't monetize their research for free. There are other benefits.

Obvious difference between the golf course and research results, which justifies different treatment, is that the golf course is rival good.

> Research universities fill a similar role. They are good to have around, even if you can't monetize their research for free. There are other benefits.

I did not claim that the downside of granting patents to universities is so large that universities should not exist at all. Only that it would be better and more just to not grant them patents based on publicly funded research.

I agree with your general argument, but golf courses are such an unfortunate example. They're the one use of public space that would be many orders of magnitude better for the community if they were used completely differently. A park would be a good start, but there are so many more.

When you have a colour chart for reference and known distances between the camera and the chart, it's not difficult to colour correct. They might have a better interpretation of the underwater imaging phenomenon, which anyone can reverse engineer and use (from the published work). Patent's are just for reputation.

> When you have a colour chart for reference and known distances between the camera and the chart, it's not difficult to colour correct.

I think the whole point of that project is that yo udon't need a chart.

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