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by staticautomatic 2337 days ago
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.
1 comments
shoguning 2337 days ago
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.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/&apple-wins-reversal-in-univ... [2] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/10/09/the-changing-face-of-u...

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tooltalk 2337 days ago
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.

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njarboe 2336 days ago
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]

[1]https://matr.net/news/why-stanford-is-celebrating-the-google...

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michaelt 2337 days ago
> If the patents were so valuable why wouldn't the universities be starting unicorns left and right

There's a vast gulf between the Fraunhofer MP3 patent and the commercial success of the iPod, Spotify and suchlike.

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