But in this case, a research institution is getting more money, presumably to be able to fund further research.
It seems like a perfect counter example of what your worries are about slowing progress.
I am extremely dubious that it will result in research that advances the state of science. Science flourishes best when you share results and hypotheses early and often, then get feedback/inspire others. But that type of communication threatens patents, so inspires people to put their research into black boxes until the legal paperwork has been filed.
Most tech transfer programs at universities don't break even, they usually lose money [2]. This is even more insane than it sounds because the research is already paid for. Tech transfer deals don't even cover the university lawyers.
If the patents were so valuable why wouldn't the universities be starting unicorns left and right with actual investors or actual revenue? Instead they try to get the money through litigation.
It's sad (and a waste of money) that universities have become fixated on being get-rich-quick patent trolls instead of doing transformational research.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/&apple-wins-reversal-in-univ... [2] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/10/09/the-changing-face-of-u...
>If the patents were so valuable why wouldn't the universities be starting unicorns left and right with actual investors or actual revenue? Instead they try to get the money through litigation.
Not sure where you are coming from, but there are many University research tech spinoff's in the US, especially in the SF Bay area.
[1]https://matr.net/news/why-stanford-is-celebrating-the-google...
There's a vast gulf between the Fraunhofer MP3 patent and the commercial success of the iPod, Spotify and suchlike.
Patents, for all their downsides, are designed to get scientists to share results. Without patents you have enormous disincentive to sharing repeatable results: you can't charge money for it if anyone can go and copy you. With patents, you can freely share results and still charge money.
Should patents last as long as they do? Should there be a cap on how much companies can charge for patented medicine, since it's effectively a temporary government-granted monopoly on curing disease? All reasonable questions, but I don't think abolishing (non-software) patents would improve communication between scientists.
No but Apple's patent for rounded corners didn't help Samsung engineers from creating their devices...and yet Apple filed the patent and sued Samsung for patent infringement.
Caltech should be championed for trolling a troll.
https://www.law360.com/articles/652442/dish-hughes-escape-so...
https://www.reuters.com/article/intuitivesurgical-lawsuit-id...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sony-settles-digital-camera-la...
(We can have a rousing debate about whether the intended functioning is something we think is societally advantageous or not, but the changes to that are different than the fixes we need to prevent patent trolls from causing so much harm.)
It's especially absurd that 4x damages were awarded against Apple here when Apple is just a customer of the allegedly infringing party. 4/5 of Broadcom's customers were not assessed damages — why pick on Apple in particular? (I mean, we all know why — they have cash.)
Yes, the time and money Apple spent designing their devices saved Samsung quite a lot of money and effort when they had to design their own.
It's unfortunate that this story has now been twisted into "Apple suing Samsung over rounded corners", when in actuality Samsung deliberately produced a 132-page report comparing the iPhone to their current phones at the time and pointed out hundreds of features and design elements they should steal from the iPhone user interface.
https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluati...
If you read through the report it's pretty blatant and goes well beyond "rounded corners".
But that doesn't really matter, you can adopt concepts and designs from 3rd parties (including competitors) so long as the same is not protected.
The "rounded corners" was patented and infringement of the patent was a count on the lawsuit, and Samsung was found liable for infringing that patent.
What is unfortunate and "twisted" is claiming a research university is a patent troll. Research universities develop and patent new technology all the time, you could say its part of their business model, and historically they are happy to license their patents to commercial entities to take to market...very rarely do universities actually develop their new inventions for commercial purposes. Most would consider it a win-win to shift costs of development to universities, not universities being patent trolls.
Maybe it's legal but I don't think it's ethical. And while implementing someone else's concept in your own way is one thing, point for point copying of a user interface that someone else designed is entirely another.
> What is unfortunate and "twisted" is claiming a research university is a patent troll.
I never claimed this.
Yes, research that can't be used for reasonable amounts of money, and therefore out of reach for startups.