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 bet that the money that they get will largely go to lawyers, administration, and increased efforts around finding/litigating patents on current research.
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.
what "black box" are you talking about? Caltech is a major research institution -- their invention was published and widely cited (according to Google, by 840+ papers), so others clearly benefitted from their work. It seems only major tech companies making billions by selling wireless gears didn't know about it.
Patent litigation is expensive but you would hardly need a billion-dollar war chest to monetize a portfolio with a successful litigation history. Between contingency fee arrangements and litigation financing, you could essentially print money with little downside risk, albeit with far less upside potential than if you paid sticker price to litigate.
This judgment sounds big but it can be appealed and Caltech may never collect a penny. A $200 million judgment against Apple was thrown out less than 2 years ago [1].
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.
Sure, if VirnetX's ordeal with Apple is any indication, Apple/Broadcomm would drag out the suit as long as they could -- and I predict that this can last 5-7 years easily.
>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.
Yea, there is this company called Google. Stanford licensed them the PageRank algorithm for stock and later sold it for a total of $336 million in the mid 00's. Check out this for info[1]
"But that type of communication threatens patents..."
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.
Did CalTech's filing of this patent help Apple or Broadcom's engineers create their devices? I sincerely doubt it. This is just patent trolling, and Caltech should be shamed for it.
>Did CalTech's filing of this patent help Apple or Broadcom's engineers create their devices?
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.
> 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.
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.
>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
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.
> 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.
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.
You don't seem to use the common definition of a patent troll. Caltech very clearly is in the business of inventing real, new technology. You can disagree with their filing of infringement lawsuits, but they're not a troll in the way the typical NPE is.
I think you can be a "real" inventor in the sense that NPEs are not and still be in violation of the nominal intent of the patent system. Caltech is here. You can call that trolling or not; OP never claimed that Caltech was literally an NPE. It's absurd that parallel invention of similar techniques, without awareness or observation of the filed patent — which USPTO often grants for extremely trivial software constructions — puts you in violation.
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.)
It sounds to me like you're the one purposely changing the definition to discredit them. It's obvious from social cues that they're not using a strict legal definition.
I'm not trying to discredit them at all. I think the question of patents and trolls is a very important one. It's worth making sure we are not confusing the seriously awful behavior of patent trolls _exploiting_ the system with the intended functioning of the system.
(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.)
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.