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?"

Comments

I knew this was coming...

[keepper]

I was a student in one of Thorng's EE classes,
EE231.. and AFAIK.. He mentioned this in 1997,
when i took his class.

Thorng invented/pioneered OOOE ( out of order
execution)... He mentioned that he had found out about certain infrindgement by a company, when
a student of his came to visit him, and casually mentioned that they were using this in their processors.

Funny how the world goes... 'Tis a small world after all'

PS: Thorng is a brilliant man.. but IMHO.. he is
not such a great professor, at least for EE231 :-D

Did Intel licence this patent as well?

[arn@lesto]

The patent appears to be valid in that Dr Torng while working for Cornell invented the technique for reordering instructions for multiple processing units. He did this in 1989 and assigned the IP rights to the university.

The university has been pursuing HP about licencing since HP came out with a processor using the algorithms/techniques he described.

Intel awarded Dr Torng a prize for advances in CPU design and acknowledged his leadership in this particular area.

Have Intel paid a licencing fee to Cornell? Intels latest processors also use this technique. If they have then HP will lose.

The original question still stands: How many universities pursue licencing patents like this? How much of the universities revenues come from this type of IP? Will this become the new standard for achademic success?