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Cornell University Sues Hewlett Packard
bmc writes: "Haven't seen this on any of the big news sites, but the local paper is reporting that Cornell is suing HP for patent infringement. The alleged infringement covers HP processors manufactured from 1995 to the present. How common is it for big universities to get involved in lawsuits like this?"
The big question is: was student code involved? :)
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OK, People, if you are going to talk about IP law, PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT IT. NO, HP can't "claim that the work was done independently at HP research and this is a coincidence". Cornell is saying they have a patent on something. If I have a patent on something, YOU CANT DO IT. A patent is a limited government sponsored monopoly. I get a patent, EVEN IF YOU COME UP WITH THE SAME THING ON YOUR OWN, YOU CANT DO IT. This is to encourage people to publish their work early. Incidentally, if no-one else makes coffee the way you make it, or no-one else sets up their computer the way you do, OR if some other people do, but it is a big secret, then go ahead. Although you just screwed yourself by publicly disclosing what you do. Whoever modded this post up clearly knows as little about IP law as whoever posted it. Please people, dont Mod something you dont know anything about, and dont post anything you similarly know nothing about.
Well, I don't know that I would necessarily say that large lawsuits like this one are common, but most research universities frequently patent their findings, and selling the licensing rights to corporations can be a not-insignificant source of revenue for them. So they've got a pretty serious incentive to enforce these patents.
Offhand, I can think of one instance of this happening. You may recall that back in August MIT filed a lawsuit against Sony for infringing on patents related to digital TV. It was also covered on slashdot, too.
That's the only other specific case that comes to mind at the moment, but I certainly have heard of others. Of course, I'm sure there are many other examples on a much smaller scale that don't get widely reported. And there are undoubtedly many cases that lead to a quiet settlement in which the corporations in question just pay the licensing fees -- which is, after all, presumably what the universities are after in the first place.
Though it's common practice for universities to patent their research, there's plenty of controversy involved, even neglecting the question of whether IP is a valid concept in general. For example, the students involved in actually doing the research usually don't wind up with more than a small fraction of the patent rights, if any at all. And then there's the issue of what kind of rights corporate sponsors get to the research; if the research is funded through government grants, then one also has to ask the question of whether the research then belongs to the taxpayers who are funding it. I see that other posts above have discussed these issues, and they've been discussed extensively here before, too.
Lawsuits like this may be rarely seen with such magnitude and scope -- though I'm sure the $100 million figure the article mentions is just inflated legal hyperbole -- but it's hardly something totally new and unexpected.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Um, one thing that several posters here seem to misunderstand is that using a technique that is patented is an infringement, regardless of whether you knew about it.
A patent holder can block the use of a technology for 20 years, period. It's not like copyright protection where you can reverse engineer the functionality, because the function itself is monopolized and not just one single implementation of it.
That, by the way, is partly why allowing patents on software is such a big mistake.
"Ah, went to Cornell, nope, can't hire them, we might get sued it they actually contribute to our product design."
So, where do they get students?
"Hello, Beijing University?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't like MS business practices, but it's never good to see MS getting sued over software patents. Every time they get sued, lose or win, software patents become more entrenched. You can't legally code a nontrivial project without violating at least a few software patents, so why would you support actions that help make coding illegal for anyone outside of a giant corporation? Basically software patents are a way of blackmailing MS. Since those patents can be used to blackmail and destroy smaller projects such as OS/FS projects, I can't support those tactics used to attack MS.
So, I would ask that people never ever support MS getting sued over software patents. The only reason you're not in their position is that you aren't worth the trouble. But you could be. Remember that.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
So your[sic] saying that acdemic[sic] institutions shouldn't have any way of protecting their IP. Any hard work put in by the people there, the money donated by the institution, businesses and grants should count for nothing if a "company" wants to use the idea.
Yes, and especially for state-funded schools. It's not just one company who should benefit either, but any and all companies who want to benefit from the ideas generated through university research.
Salon has an article on just this sort of thing, where schools are turning their research into Big Business instead of Big Teaching.
My favorite quote: Larry Smarr, a professor of computer science at U.C. San Diego, said, "I don't think universities should be in the moneymaking business. They ought to be in the changing-the-world business, and open source is a great vehicle for changing the world."
The alumni donate money to the school, not to maximize their investment in profits, but to maximize the impact of learning and teaching. Pure Research is not Applied Research. Pure Research is setting out a roadmap where none existed before, and what good is a roadmap if the society which paid for it cannot use it?
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