[rdl]

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.)

[DanielBMarkham]

Shocked! I'm just shocked! Gambling at Rick's!

(Since universities have an overwhelming interest in making tons of money, this is a typical non-story-story "dog bites man". The only thing of interest is the contortions the players will go through to keep the cronyism humming along. The joke above references the movie Casablanca. Everybody knew that there was a lot of money changing hands but the official position had to be that there was total surprise when it was discovered. If you can't see the money changing hands here, you're not paying attention)

[001sky]

Presumed credibility is the pretext for all con-artist scams.

So hypocrisy is always a story...

[Alex3917]

> 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 would cause their patents to become basically worthless.

Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property.

[bediger4000]

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.

[bsder]

> Even if you could make a good case for eliminating the patent system, which I think would be difficult, undoubtedly it's much more difficult to make a good argument for why only the super rich should be allowed to own intellectual property.

Um, have you looked at the patent system lately?

Only the super rich can afford the legal fees to enforce their patents, anyway. It doesn't matter if I have a patent if the big guys can just grind me into dust, anyway.