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

Hmmm....

[NiftyNews]

The big question is: was student code involved? :)

Re:Hmmm....

[digitalunity]

I hope not. This is going to be a media wreck if they lose. Of course, I can't blame them. Major universities have always attempted to subsidize tuition by licensing patents.

I hope they work out a deal. I'd really hate to see either party lose this case.

Re:Hmmm....

[hotchai]

C'mon .. I am sure student work is involved (code or otherwise). Seriously, how many parofessors/staff do you think actually "write" code? More often than not, it some over-worked, under-paid grad student who does the work (though increasingly undergrads are also making serious contributions).

BTW, what difference does it make if student code is invloved or not? At most universities the I.P. belongs to the university, not to the student/professor.

heh

[Zephy]

IMHO, Academic institutions shouldn't get themselves involved in cases like these. If they lose then the students will end up paying the price with higher fees/less equipment. I hope they've got a strong case

Re:heh

[nzhavok]

So your saying that acdemic 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.

grow up

Re:heh

[Speare]

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?

Re:heh

[sketerpot]

Salon has an article on just this sort of thing, where schools are turning their research into Big Business instead of Big Teaching.

By the way, have you seen the advertisements for a college, I think it was called "Stevens" or something like that, that touted the way people not only created technology, but brought it to the market? It sounds like the sort of crazy place you're talking about.

You're right. Colleges are for learning, not for making the college money.

Re:heh

[Lars T.]

So you are saying that "especially [...] state-funded schools" should basically give away their research to Big Business? Hey, that's giving tax money to Big Business.

Re:heh

[mikethegeek]

"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."

Wrong. Universities should be in the TEACHING business, not the "change the world" business.

This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.

If a university sets out to "change the world", who's ideas and what world is the blueprint? I think you see my point.

I believe that taxpayer funded educational institutions should be required to release ALL their research into the public domain. After all, as taxpayers, we're ALL helping to subsidize it in some way.

There should be no restriction on who can use their research, be it fortune 500 or mom and pop shop. The purpose of a university is to educate students, and to improve knowledge through research. That knowledge should be public domain.

Otherwise, universities are taxpayer funded and subsidized R&D departments producing proprietary, corporate only IP.

In the corporate world, IP is owned by that which funds the institution (the business), not the inventor. The same principle should apply to public universities. I don't feel that a university has any more right to exclusive rights to profit from it's IP than the Joe Schmo who invents something in an IBM lab does.

Re:heh

[Lars T.]

No, that would be called "Government subsidizing Big Business, while giving them tax cuts to boot". It's time BB grows up, instead of depending on government wellfare.

Re:heh

[mikethegeek]

" So you are saying that "especially [...] state-funded schools" should basically give away their research to Big Business? Hey, that's giving tax money to Big Business."

No, state funded schools should have to give away their research to TAXPAYERS. Last time I checked big business also pays taxes.

If a state funded school doesn't like that, well the choice is simple. Give up all taxpayer subsidy and exist as a privately funded, taxpaying institution. Just like any corporation's R&D department is.

Don't take from the taxpayer with one hand, and with the other deny them the return on their investment.

Re:heh

[mikethegeek]

"Just for correctness, the college in question is not state-funded. Cornell is broken up into several colleges, three of which are state funded (significantly lower tuition). The College of Engineering however, is a private institution and has the typical 36k tuition bill."

That makes no difference. If the taxpayers fund part of it, they are helping to fund all of it.

Not only that, but they are funding it in the fact that their non-"public" colleges are tax exempt.

Re:heh

[KjetilK]

This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.

I agree about that. However, teaching critical thinking is all about changing the world, so I agree about the original quote as well, and I think there is no conflict at all with teaching critical thinking and being in the changing-the-world business. On the contrary, being in the changing-the-world business means teaching critical thinking.

Actually, I think you (and I, I think.... :-) ) would agree very much with the basic points of the person cited.

Re:heh

[Lars T.]

But the only taxpayers who can do anything with the research is Big Business. Even if making it marketable were cheap enough for small companies, BB would just rush over them with marketforce. Yes, BB pays taxes, but they not only keep paying less and less, they also get "something" already, like graduates from the tax funded universities and infrastructure.

Re:heh

[Dwonis]

You'd be amazed how many people think like this. For a recent example, look the latest anti-cloning arguments. They basically amount to the idea that "current cloning technology is imperfect, so research should be forbidden."

Re:heh

[symbolic]

This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.

And they don't even do that any more, since most of the time, those with the real knowledge (the professors) are off on some research project, leaving the actual "teaching" to underlings. College has become a very expensive formality - especially when it involves the better-known schools. It's a catch-22- students believe that they have to fork out buttloads of money in order to get a good education, and good educational credentials (whether or not one actually learns anything) are necessary for a good job. What a racket.

Raising Money

[Larkfellow]

could lead to a request for damages in excess of $100 million

Is this Cornell's way of raising money? Well, I suppose it's a little easier than baking 100 million muffins and cookies.

But what interests me is exactly what type of "damages" were actually done. And why wait 6 years before saying anything? Maybe it just took them that long to get inside the box itself. Anywho, enough insulting. It just seems to me that it would be rather difficult to prove that 1) The idea was taken in the first place and 2) That it really caused $100Million in damages, since Cornell seems as strong to me now as it did 10 years ago.

Please excuse the rambling, it's almost 7 in the morning and I'm still at work from yesterday, what a long night....

Re:Raising Money

[aka-ed]

According to the article, Professor H.C. Torng, who taught at Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1960 to 1999, spent most of his career working on the concept. That means over twenty years. If you don't think usurping a guy's life work results in "damages," perhaps you should try to grow a soul. Then there's Cornell's expenses for underwriting his research, I think Cornell Profs are paid rather well. The value of an unenforced patent is zero, while an enforced one very well can be worth $100 million.

"Damages" doesn't necessarily mean Cornell lost funding in a visible manner, just that they lost value in the particular patent.

As for what they need to prove, they don't need to prove the patent was taken (as in a copyright case), only that it was violated, and that can be demonstrated from the code.

Re:Raising Money

[flacco]

"I must, and yet I cannot. How do you calculate that? Where do 'must' and 'cannot' meet on the graph?"

At the liquor store.

this is gonna be fun

[atari2600]

Cornell is not of those also ran schools - its among the best and the intellectuals do know what they were getting into. It doesnt matter if student code is involved (which actually would be the case) - what matters is how the technology was being licensed and why it took so long for Cornell to realise that HP was "stealing" the work done at Cornell. HP can always claim that the work was done independently at HP research and this is a coincidence...you know shit happens. Also the way the patents are being given out, i am going to patent the way i make my tea and coffee, well the way i set my computer (cabinet under the table) and how i drink diet pepsi while keying with one hand. Not so hard for HP to pull out such a patent from its magic hat. Aww cmon guys - )(*&@#+)&$)+!*&@#(&!_@ :) '2 + 2 = 4 for any freaking value of 2>0'

Re:this is gonna be fun

[yfarren]

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.

Re:this is gonna be fun

[mpe]

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.

In the latter situation there might be a case for arguing that the patent should never have been granted in the first place. Since parents shouldn't be granted for the "obvious", several independant people comming up with the same thing makes it look as though it is "obvious".

This is to encourage people to publish their work early.

IP laws, at least where this is happening, are intended as means to that end. Rather than ends in themselves.

Cornell's press release

[marnanel]

Here's Cornell's press release about it.

Re:Cornell's press release

[Enonu]

I liked the real ending even better!!!! :) :) !!

Representing Cornell in the legal proceedings are the Office of University Counsel, led by Mingle, and patent counsel from the Los Angeles and New York City offices of the firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.

Copyright infringement?

[triptmind]

The article credits the 1989 patent to a prof. at Cornell Univ., a Professor Emeritus H.C. Torng. According to the article, he substantially increased efficient and speed of the processor. I question why this is only used in HPs or why HP is the sole defendent? However, this dispute seems as though the professor should be the party suing HP, not the university and the Research Foundation therein?
As the university is suing on an infringement dating back to 1995, one has to wonder what has caused the delay in action on Cornell's part, and what the statute of limitations is for this type of case? Well, hopefully all will be righted without harming the students at the well-renown university.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[heliocentric]

seems as though the professor should be the party suing HP, not the university

Eventhough the work was done by a person of whom you know the name, that does not mean that that person holds the rights to the patent/development/idea. In this case the person's employeer owns the rights and it is the responsibility of the owner (ie the one who stands to benefit monitarily) to defend what they own.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[triptmind]

Very true, however, if he created it without intention of granting/giving the university sole rights, it still is his. I do not have access to the actual patent, so I will take claim for my ignorance. Like I said however, it does seem as though it should be an action taken by the professor, unless of course this was part of an E.C. assignment or some university funded research, in that case...

Re:Copyright infringement?

[nzhavok]

I question why this is only used in HPs or why HP is the sole defendent?

Perhaps it is in a processor only made by HP, or in a company they have aquired. Or other companies using the chechnique have licensed it.

seems as though the professor should be the party suing HP

It's often the case that the University could end up owning the work he did, or at least a share of it. This is also true of some jobs, i.e. people develop something great in their own time, the company claims it.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[digitalunity]

Many engineers in R&D are forced to sign Anti-Competitive clauses that say they can design exclusively only for that employer. I know Darden Restarants, the largest casual dining company in the world, forces all managers to sign such clauses. It's big business... they have much to lose by their employee's helping the competition.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[yfarren]

OK. Again, people this is not underatted, it is overated. Whoever posted this just wanted to shoot off their mouth as fast as they could. Just look at the title. CORNELL ISNT TALKING ABOUT COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT, THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT PATENTS. If whoever wrote this post actually cared about his rights, he would look into them, just a little bit, and be aware that A PATENT IS NOT A COPYRIGHT. Patents and copyrights have totally diffrent terms, an defend their respective owners rights in completely diffrent ways. A copyright means that you can't copy what I did. It is assumed automatically upon creation of a new work. It need not be registered with anyone, anywhere (although you lose some rights if it isnt). If you something I cam up with, on your own, then I have no claims. The term of a copyright, today is 75 years past the authors death (thank Sonny Bono, It used to be 50) or straight up 75 (it might be 70, I forget) years if the copyright is owned by a corporation. The term of a patent, is, in general, 17 years from the date of issue of the patent. A patent is a limited monopoly. It must be registered, which means it has to be deemed new, non-obvious, and useful. It has to be published. That means you have to fully disclose how to do the thing you are claiming a monopoly on. In exchange for fully disclosing your idea, you get a limited monopoly. If you dont fully disclose your idea, and I can prove it, your patent is invalid. If you get a patent, a limited monopoly, anyone doing the thing covered by your patent, during those 17 years has to pay you licensing fees. If I inform you that you are violating my patent, and you dont stop, then you have to pay me triple damages from the point in time when I informed you that you are in violation of my patent. What caused the delay in action on Cornells part DOESNT MATTER. They are stilled owed (if, in fact HP is violationg their patent) licensing fees, because they still have the limited govenrment sponsored monopoly.

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

Re:I knew this was coming...

[anonymous loser]

Thorng invented/pioneered OOOE ( out of order execution)

NOTE: this is a cut+paste from my reply to another post somewhere else. I just wanted to set the record straight. BTW it's typically abbreviated OOE (the "of" doesn't get a letter).

Err no he didn't. Tomasulo invented the way we do OOE many, many years before there were "3 billion fucking transistors" on a processor (which is still a slight exaggeration even by today's standards). The first machine to employ OOE was the IBM 360/91. Here are some pictures of the first (that I know of) 360/91 in operation in 1968 at NASA. Even though the machine was (by 1968's standards) blazingly fast, the 360/91 failed miserably and only a few were actually produced. The reason this machine failed was because it was incapable of handling interrupts properly. The 360/91 only supported imprecise interrupts, which meant that instructions causing the interrupt as well as subsequent instructions could continue to execute if they were already in the pipeline. This is generally not a Good Thing(tm).

I don't know where all of the Cornell students seem to get the impression that Torng invented OOE. Hopefully this is not from Torng himself, as anyone who studies modern processor design can tell you the first thing you learn about with OOE is the Tomaluso algorithm, which although it was invented over 30 years ago is still used in modern processors largely unchanged from the original design. This is not to say that Torng had no role. He did in fact substantially facilitate OOE, by devising a system to allow mutliple instructions to issue simultaneously (as his patent claims). Torng himself pays homage to Tomasulo in the patent, referencing his paper from 1967.

Who has the right to litigate?

[loche451]

I think it is wonderful that Cornell is suing for damages in excess of 100 million based on the effort of one of it's professors that is no longer there.

At issue is a patent awarded in 1989 for a computer instruction processing technique created by Professor Emeritus H.C. Torng, who taught at Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1960 to 1999.

"Professor Torng devoted much of his professional life to developing this highly innovative approach to high-speed processing," he said in a statement. "We cannot stand by while Hewlett-Packard profits from Professor Torng's contributions in this field in violation of Cornell's patent."

Is the patent-owner at all involved, is he even still at Cornell?

Sounds like another case of the lawyers being the ones to truely benefit.

Re:Who has the right to litigate?

[mESSDan]

Read what you wrote ;)

"Professor Torng devoted much of his professional life to developing this highly innovative approach to high-speed processing," he said in a statement. "We cannot stand by while Hewlett-Packard profits from Professor Torng's contributions in this field in violation of Cornell's patent."

Is the patent-owner at all involved, is he even still at Cornell?

You wrote that it's in violation of "Cornell's patent", not "Professor Torng's patent".

Universities often own the patents that professors and students develop while they are employed/working there. The University owns the patent, the professor emeritus gets a cut of whatever royalties they receive from licensing it.

Re:Who has the right to litigate?

[nyjx]

Very likely that Torng ceeded his rights to the University (or at least part of them). It is common practice in Unviersities that the University ends up being the (or one of the) patent holders.

Ways to make money

[Konster]

Things to note are:

Torng was named Intel's first Intel Academic Research Fellow. Not a big deal really. Cept maybe Intel has some back-door deals cooking or cooked with this patent.

This was patented in 1995...but the patent appears to cover every x86 CPU on the market.

The _Abstract is as follows:

"An instruction issuing mechanism for boosting throughput of processors with multiple functional units. A Dispatch Stack (DS) and a Precedence Count Memory (PCM) are employed which allow multiple instructions to be issued per machine cycle. Additionally, instructions do no have to be issued according to their order in the instruction stream, so that non-sequential instruction issuance occurs. In this system, multiple instruction issuance and non-sequential instruction issuance policies enhance the throughput of processors with multiple functional units."

Sounds like someone is trying to stave off future patent disputes...the like of which we have seen between Centaur/IDT and VIA...

Its called OOOE

[keepper]

Out of Order execution...

And yes, it's a patent that affects most cpu's

And the reason that it does? well, it's because
most cpu designers read his published works :-P

( i think he published the findings in 89,
and the first intel cpu to use it was the pentium )

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?

The Patent Itself

[Konster]

The patent number for this is: 4,807,115

Surf on over to US patent and Trademark Office and do a search with the patent number here:
Search uspto.gov by patent number

Or read it here if I don't bung up the the HTML.

Re:Forcing open Trade Secrets

[Yakman]

How do we know that microsoft isn't violating someone's copyright if we never see their source code!

Come on, man! If Microsoft were using other people's code that they weren't entitled to they'd tell us. Don't you trust Bill Gates or something? I mean, look at the guy's track record!

On another note, you CAN obtain the WinXP kernel sources, they're at www.kernel.org under the name "linux-2.4.x".

2 examples of prior art...

[quantus]

What about the IBM 360/91 from the late 60's? It used Tomasulo ( register renaming) for out of order execution...

As for multiple issue processors, how about the AP-120B ( floating point processor ) from the early 1980's...

I'm sure the above satisfies prior art, unless Cornell has some exotic twist on the implementation that they have received the patent for.

Re:2 examples of prior art...

[aka-ed]

Here's the abstract of the patent:
"An instruction issuing mechanism for boosting throughput of processors with multiple functional units. A Dispatch Stack (DS) and a Precedence Count Memory (PCM) are employed which allow multiple instructions to be issued per machine cycle. Additionally, instructions do no have to be issued according to their order in the instruction stream, so that non-sequential instruction issuance occurs. In this system, multiple instruction issuance and non-sequential instruction issuance policies enhance the throughput of processors with multiple functional units."

If that description fits the processors you mention, then you have a point.

Re:He couldnt have invented out of order execution

[dirtyhippie]

Err he did. Perhaps you are thinking of compilers optimizing the order of instructions? That is not what this is about, this is about the actual hardware taking the instructions and reordering them on the fly. If my memory serves, which it usually doesn't, it requires something on the order of 250,000 transistors, so if you are asking why no one thought of this before 1989, it's because we didn't have 3 fucking billion or whatever transistors on each chip back then, so it would have increased the number of transistors by an order of magnitude. Of course, if you ask me, the compiler should do reordering, but what should I know, I got a big fat C in the *only* low level essentially EE (aka architecture) course I had to take - god bless the old-school theoretical computer-scientists-as-wanna-be-mathemeticians attitude at this school!)

-DH

ps - goddamn just about everything else at this school.

Why is everyone so down on the school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep reading: "Why did they wait 7 years?" "Why do they need to get x amount of dollars for this?"

Did you stop to think about it? I'm going to play the devils advocate here and propose a different scenario.. It's already been stated that the university was talking to HP prior to this lawsuit. Maybe your forgetting how long and drawn out legal processes can be. Specially considering the position of a company knowing it uses patented technology illegally.

Also, we don't even know how long they waiting. You all assume that because the lawsuit claims damages from 95 that they've known since then. Who says they didn't find out about all of this until later, as indicated by another poster previous to this one? I'd say if they found out in 1997 and began contact with HP to fix the situation that a few years of talking with them before running to the courts to solve the problem doesn't sound out of this world.

And the sum of money clearly comes from the earnings they would have received from HP if the technology had been properly licensed. Had they been granted a share of the profits for the past 7 years as deserved who knows how much that would really be worth.

Anyway, I don't know that this is the truth any more than the other situations presented, but I'm certainly not jumping to conclusions just yet as I see a lot of self righteous people doing.

Re:The Cisco story is quite interesting

[digitalunity]

They didn't have to. They ended up settling, thank god.

hp - this has happened before

[vvikram]

of course not to this scale perhaps but HP _had_ a patent infringement problem with univ of rochester. click here for the link.

in general however the size of a company like hp [and its associated hpLabs research] the number of patents churned out is ENORMOUS . i interned in hpL palo alto last summer and the patent figures overall for the previous year was many hundreds..... dont have exact figures sorry. i guess this is due to a) the scale of operations involved b) it pays to patent things *just in case* / *making sure* you have the cat in the bag if you know what i mean.

vv

Re:hp - this has happened before

[pmc]

The reason for a lot of these patents "hundreds of patents" is defense (there are other reasons of course). By defense I mean that if they happen to infringe, or even be accused of infringing, a competitors patent then they have some ammo to strike back or muddy the water.

Faced with a protracted and expensive legal battle the companies will more than likely do a deal, as opposed to go to court.

With Cornell, on the other hand, they are not a competitor. Neither are they poor. So countersuing and bleeding them dry - the standard two tactics in such cases - can't work.

It'll be interesting, but I reckon that HP will pay up before court. All Cornell have to lose is some money, but HP could, at worst, lose their product line (if they are violating the patent then they have to stop making the product). Cornell could license the patent to HP, but they don't have to. And I would hate to be a negotiator for HP during any licencing talks if and when they loose their case - talk about a weak position: you can't bluff when the other party knows your cards.

Not totally unprecedented

[ambclams]

How common is it for big universities to get involved in lawsuits like this?

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.

Re:Not totally unprecedented

[john@iastate.edu]

Quoting from http://www.iastate.edu/~isurf/news/news6.html we find that patents are big business for Universities:

A Final Chapter for FAX Algorithm

Earlier this year, the last Type III facsimile machine manufacturer holdout finally agreed to obtain a license from ISURF on this ISU technology. This final settlement brings the total number of licensees of the ISU FAX algorithm to 24 with royalties totaling over $36 million. The patent survived three re-examination challenges at the USPTO and serves to remind us the importance of keeping good research and invention records.

This was a patent the University discovered it had just before it was to expire -- well after fax machines were ubiquitous...

More lawsuits, Target: Microsoft

[sakusha]

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

MIT alleges patent violation; Microsoft, Photoworks named in suit
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/134387111_mit05.html

Microsoft accused of violating patents
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/53365_paten t05.shtml

Okay, that last one wasn't so on-topic, no universities were involved, but hey, we all love to see Microsoft in deep shit, so what the hell..

Re:More lawsuits, Target: Microsoft

[Lonath]

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.

It doesn't matter if HP didn't know

[Cardinal Biggles]

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.

Re:It doesn't matter if HP didn't know

[Karpe]

Yup, right on there. And you should add that if they had a independent group that made the same discoveries at around the same time, and cannot show any prior art there is no advantadge to them, the patent goes to the first who fills it.

Re:It doesn't matter if HP didn't know

[mikethegeek]

"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."

Yep. Because what this does is allow works that should only be allowed copyright protection to get the much stronger patent protection.

In reality, this sort of thing (done more or less by bureaucratic fiat, not really in law) is a bigger triumph for the IP cartels than even the DMCA.

Had we our current IP law/patent climate back in the 1970's, when the computer revolution really took off, VisiCalc, WordStar, et all, would have been PATENTED, and there would have been no competition allowed to them until the mid-late 90's at the earliest..

Or would it have? Every time someone adds a new icon or button or any other function to a program it's a new "original" work. Which is another reason why software patents shouldn't exist, and are WAY outside the scope of patent law as expressed in the Constitution.

Patenting software is as ridiculous as allowing patents on books. Imagine authors getting sued for infringement because entire GENRES are patented?

Re:awww cmon

[yfarren]

The point it, it wasnt licenced. If I have a monopoly, you arent allowed to do it. Period. That is what a monopoly is. My monopoly can be invalidated in any number of ways. Lack of proper disclosure. Revelation of prior art. Those two come to immediately to mind. How long I wait to mention to you that I have a patent, is not one of the ways to invalidate my patent. Issued patents are all published. The assumption is, if you do something, you are supposed to make sure it ISN'T patented. If you do it for 10 years, without cheking if it is patneted I can come to you, in 10 years, and say "Hey, that is mine, you have been violating my monopoly, you owe me money." That is a right granted to me, by my monopoly.

Assuming that cornell has a legitamate patent, it doesnt matter why they didnt complain earlier. Further, it doesnt matter whether or not you HARM me by violating my monopoly. It is mine, granted by the govenrment, from the moment of patnent issue. If you are doing something, that I have a patent on, and you dont get a license, you are going to owe me money.

And the statemnt "Dude i dont know anything about friggin IP law " is rather the point of my post. You dont know anything about IP law. Why are making irrelevant proclamations, specifically

"what matters is how the technology was being licensed and why it took so long for Cornell to realise that HP was "stealing" the work done at Cornell",

it wasnt being licenced (read the article) and why it took cornell so long has nothing to do with cornells rights. You werernt being infomative, you were bieng mis-informend, and you have gotten modded up for it. I suppose I am railing as much againt the Moderators as your post. Your post was just not relevant. It says "The point is X" when X has next to nothing to do with the point. Now, if you want to say "Patent law should prescribe people from suing, if they do not aggresivley defend their patents, the way trademark law will invalidate a trademark not aggressivly defended" I guess that would sort of be relevant. But that isnt what you said. You said, "what matters is", and there you are just wrong. It has been that slashdot is a resource for people to learn about stuff. You want to just say something, ok. But I would hope that poeple who are mod-ing will pay attention to how they mod. I mean, seriously, you are at 3 now. When something is modded to 3 I would hope that it knows what it is talking about. And yes, it is slashdot, where people supposedly care about what their rights are and arent. So we should know about them. And not just say silly things. And hopefully not get arbitrarily modded up for saying silly things.

Re:WTF

[kawaichan]

No matter how crappy you think Itanium is. HP and Intel codeveloped the IA-64. They actually dumped their own RISC processor in favourite of Itanium. Look what they are getting into now...

Re:jeesuz

[yfarren]

man I would just copy and paste.

:-P

All good. Sorry to rail at you like that.

Its just you are modded at three. Which is silly. And it happens a lot. People, get moderator points, and just go off and moderate whatever. Cause they can. Without knowing diddly about it. And I feel it brings down the quality of slashdot, and that annoys me. I wish people would pay more attention to what they say, preview before they post, and think for a minute before they mod. Anyhow...

More importantly . . .

[acceleriter]

. . . how is it that universities, such as Cornell, which, though private (but a Land Grant college), receives significant Federal funds for its mission and infrastructure (think Title IV financial aid, for example), are even allowed to hold patents to begin with?

I have no problem with an institution being able to hold intellectual "property," so long as they don't take one dime of tax money.

Re:More importantly . . .

[Registered Coward v2]

. . . how is it that universities, such as Cornell, which, though private (but a Land Grant college), receives significant Federal funds for its mission and infrastructure (think Title IV financial aid, for example), are even allowed to hold patents to begin with?

If you continue your arguement, why should anyone who receives financial aid (such as guaranteed loans) be allowed to patent anything, since they've benefited from federal money as well?

The answer, of course, is that it's their work that creates the idea, and the ability to profit from this is a strong motivator to create things. The government benefits as well, as the recipent of taxes on profits, for example.

In fact, that was part of the idea behind the Land Grant system - to create universities that educate people in practical arts (primarily agricultural and mechanical, hence the A&M in many land grant schools original names, such as Ohio A&M, one of the largest schools in the US), in locations where higher education was not readily available.

I have no problem with an institution being able to hold intellectual "property," so long as they don't take one dime of tax money.

As a side note, the government also owns and licenses IP, for examples you can visit:

http://technology.nasa.gov/license.html

Re:More importantly . . .

[Registered Coward v2]

First of all, even corporations receive federal subsidies, in the form of tax deductions or outright grants.

The public interest is in supporting the creation of an educated populace.

Why should the government subsidize individuals (via loans and grants)and let them profit from what they create anymore than universities?

Re:More importantly . . .

[Registered Coward v2]

With regard to "subsidies" for individuals (e.g. home tax deduction, tuition tax credits), let me make a trollish statement here--if you believe a tax deduction is a subsidy, I'll start subsidizing you. Give me 40% of your income. Your subsidy will be that I'll let you keep that 40% of the money you earn that you spend on things like my pet charities which I like you spending your money on. (Weak, I know, but it's a pet peeve.)

Nonetheless, a tax deduction still subsidizes spending choices of the taxpayer by changing the price of certain activities.

Federal grants and guaranteed loans are actually subsidies to higher education institutions, not individuals. They put upward pressure on the price of education (more dollars chasing classroom seats == incentive to soak that money up--look what's been happening to tuition rates, particularly after the Tax Relief Act of '97), rather than increasing access and choice. There was a time when a student could work himself to death to pay his way through a selective private college. Now that's not even theoretically possible for the best schools--you still have to be rich or brilliant, and if you're only brilliant, you'll be borrowing.

Actually, schools are able to price discriminate very effectively since they know exactly what you make and your net worth - so they reduce prices based on what they think you will pay. Loans, even though most of the money goes to the school (you can alos borrow for living expenses), are made available to students at lower rates due to interest subsidies - which directly benefit the student.

At any rate, the student receives a direct price reduction in the cost of education - regardless of whom gets the money.

Re:More importantly . . .

[3am]

The Engineering college is not publicly funded. AFAIK, only the Human Ecology, Agriculture, and Veterinary (?) school are funded under the Morill land grant.

Re:More importantly . . .

[Registered Coward v2]

Tax deductions aren't subsidies. They're just allowing the corporation (or individual) to keep something they already have. Income does not belong to the government by default.

Which is also true of university IP - they created it, not the government. IP doesn't belong to the government (and by extension, free for anyone to use) by default either.

No, more like grads snubbed when applying

[ackthpt]

With the growing shortsighted climate of University I.P. I can see HR departments (where your resume is first sent for screening) start keeping a checklist of universities which might sue over I.P. inadvertently employed. i.e. students discuss a technique with peers, like prof. Tong, then head out into the workforce like a carrier of a disease.

"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?"

What amazes me...

[Karpe]

...is that we don't see this kind of thing everyday. I mean, who develops a great amount of new technology? Universities. I would say that they spend much more money on research than companies (granted: many companies pays big dollars to universities to do the research for them, in exchange of the patents). And who is always suing because of patent infringements? Companies.

There is something wrong here. It is the case that there are many more university patents out there, but they don't have the money to sue those who ingringe them, or it's the case that there are more company patents out there, in this case we should ask ourselves why universities are patenting so little. (Ok, one answer is that universities don't patent trivial stuff, while companies do it in order to obtain revenue from licensing and lawsuits instead of really developing products).

In any one of the two cases, there is something fundamentally wrong with this system, and it's not necessary to argue if our patent system is really fair to notice this.

Yes, this is how it works

[dilute]

There is nothing in the slightest way unusual about this development.

Patent royalties are an important source of funding for universities with strong technological departments. The faculty people who are the inventors on the patents also get to participate very nicely in the revenue stream attributable to their patents. It is a good deal for them.
Universities license these patents all over the place, and sue when they have to in order to enforce them, such as where companies that need licenses (because they are practicing the patented technology) don't want to pay for them.

Stanford has been involved in quite a few of these suits, especially in the biotech area, where the patents are worth a lot because it's necessary to practice them in order to make a important drugs. There are plenty of other examples, including some computer-related ones, such as in the area of video compression.

We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties annually, which means a lot to these institutions. As a method of funding technological research, I think this system has a lot going for it.

Why he waited so long...

[mizhi]

MY question is, and perhaps you can answer this, why did he wait almost 7 YEARS before filing a lawsuit like this? The cynic in me suggests that they waiting until HP used the chip in enough products to warrent a settlement... that's assuming HP violated a patent at all.

Re:Why he waited so long...

[keepper]

Because he prolly was not really sure/aware that they were violating it.

Re:Why he waited so long...

[mizhi]

It stated in the article that he knew about it in 1997. That's 4 years ago. So the question remains.

Link

[keepper]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec97/Torng.b s.html

For the Lazy.. http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec97/Torng.b s.html

MIT Suing Techs

[alanjstr]

Its common enough, since MIT is suing tech companies over imaging software they've patented.

That might still invalidate it...

[Svartalf]

They could patent the improvement possibly, but not the main idea (which is what this patent seems to cover from a read of the copy...). If that is the case, the IBM prior art does invalidate it.

A shift in the balance of power...

[mcrbids]

OK, So a university professor comes out with [neat idea], and patents it.

He then casually mentions [neat idea] to students... and they learn it, as they are PAYING to do!

Does that mean now that the University OWNS everything that the student can ever do with [neat idea]?

This violates the very founding principle of College education!

I just cannot see how this is right. University money should not be used for this kind of thing!

Re:A shift in the balance of power...

[SteveM]

Does that mean now that the University OWNS everything that the student can ever do with [neat idea]?

It means that the patent owner can determine what is done with that idea for the life of the patent. In this case the university is the patent holder.

This is no different from a company or individual (not associated with a university) patenting an idea and then you reading the patent and using the idea in your product without permission. Why should those associated with universities be unable to patent their ideas?

This violates the very founding principle of College education!

And that principle would be?

One of the good things about the patent process is that it encourages the open sharing of knowledge while at the same time granting the right of exclusivity to the person who developed that knowledge. Contrast this with trade secrets where the knowledge remains secret.

Steve M

Something strange about university patents

[DaveWood]

I'm just thinking big-picture here. I don't know what happened in this particular case, but what flashed into my head as I read the precis for this story was worrisome scenario:

A student learns a technique from a professor. He goes out into the world, uses it for his employer, and then... a year or two on... the employer gets a letter with the two ugliest words in the business ("patent infringement")...

Isn't it a kind of conflict of interest for university professors to be patenting IP that may overlap with their course material? Isn't it an exceptionally likely trap to fall into? We generally assume that what we learn in class is "paid for" by our tuition, but that might not be the case...

Vacuum tube rennisance?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

With the RCA patent on field emission expiring, and practical long-life field emitters being debugged, we might have the potential for a vacuum tube rennisance.

Vacuum tubes are inherently fast. Electrons travel much faster than holes during conduction, and when traveling across the gap (where the switching takes place) they are making a single free-path hop - similar to the fast N-type FETs (gate shorter than mean-free-path) that are currently being researched.

Use a field-emission cathode and shorten the gap to something comparable to that of a transistor in an integrated circuit and you can use voltages comparable to those of an IC also - but you can also scale up voltage and power arbitrarily at the I/O "pins" without substrate breakover. Meanwhile, at the lower voltages of the internal circuitry you don't have the tip-erosion problem from ion-bombardment.

So there's potential for vacuum integrated circuits on about the same size scale as semiconductor integrated circuits, but made of glass, metal, and diamond. They could run faster than semiconductors, and do a number of other useful tricks to electrons in flight (like "bunching" for microwave amplification) that are impractical in a semiconductor. Vacuum electronics can do many things in one step that can take hundreds or thousands of steps in semiconductors.

Downside is that you don't have complimentary charge conductors, so you don't get a CMOS equivalent. (Unless you use positrons. Maybe that's what Asimov's robot brains were up to. B-) ) So you'll still drop power in resistors (or use inductors to pair up two electron tubes when you don't need the low-frequency/DC end of a signal). But you can let the whole IC get cherry-red with waste heat so that's not a problem in many applications where the power is available.

Vacuum tubes - even low-voltage vacuum ICs - are inherently immune to many harsh environmental factors (like heat and radiation) which give semiconductors heartburn.

Field emission could also give a new lease on life to many conventional vacuum-tube applications. (Tubes are still used in high-power applications at high frequencies - like radio and radar.) It's a drop-in substitute for a heated cathode.

But embed a vacuum-electronic integrated circuit to do the detail work within a cold-emission vacuum power device and you have a bunch of "killer apps". Multiple "tubes" in one vacuum bottle, and even some embedded integrated driver circuitry, had been experimented with. But now we're talking a single vacuum "tube" with a very long life (no burnout - fadeout after many years if ever) with an entere application built in.

Think a wafer-sized cellphone, a bottle-sized cellular base station or broadcast TV transmitter, or putting the whole set of electronics for an airport radar INSIDE the magnetron. Then think "one device with a guaranteed minimum life of decades" rather than "keep replacing burned-out tubes".

Now think about putting these in space probes. (Heck - once it's up you don't even need the vacuum envelope. B-) )

Nope.

[mindstrm]

Firstly, if they knew about it 6 years ago, but said nothing, I believe that will limit what they can claim as damages in court.. but it's not that black and white.
Also, they in no way have to show that HP 'took' the idea from them, that's not how patents work. It doesn't matter if HP came up with it independently.. if Cornell has the patent, that is absolute.
As for 100 million in damages, 'damages'is a loose term. HP should not have used patented technology without paying royalties to Cornell.. which is what cornell is really seeking.

They're doing an Adobe.

[Futurepower(tm)]

Suing HP: $8,000,000 if they win.

Suing other people: Another $4,000,000.

Being known by every prospective student as an organization that sues: Priceless. (Do you want to come from a university that prospective employers know might sue? This is a cost to the university whether or not they win.)

I thought the whole point of a university was to collect people who know more than the average person, for the benefit of the society as a whole. But now, if the university discovers that they may have benefited us, they sue?

The patent claims seem overly broad to me. If you have experience doing assembly language programming, you are certainly aware of the possibilities of out-of-order execution. I was doing what the patent claims long before 1989 -- manually. That is certainly prior art.

When you hand-optimize assembly code, you develop lots of appreciation for cases where re-ordered execution might not function correctly. The claims basically say, "Execute instructions out of their normal order, except where that wouldn't work." So, Columbia has a patent on hard-wiring a processor to run an obvious kind of program.

From the story: Dullea acknowledged that the university is involved in patent litigation with Carl Zeiss Optical, Inc., maker of eyeglass frames, but said the case is "not of this size." Translation: "We are not really an organization that likes to litigate, except..."

From a previous post: The average Cornell prof salary is below corresponding salaries at "peer" institutions and definitely below private industry equivalents. The faculty has been complaining about that for at least twenty years without effect. - son of Cornell professor. The university is NOT planning on sharing any money with students or faculty if they win.

The suit seems to me to be an example of a habitually adversarial kind of thinking that is becoming quite common in the U.S. culture. Remember Adobe and Skylarov, and Adobe's attack on the writer of the Killustrator program? People and societies sometimes arrive at a habitual frame of mind in which they are unable to find creative ways to live in the world without conflict.

The recent terrorism is also an example of this. According to major news sources; the U.S. government caused many of the problems to which the terrorists were reacting: What should be the response to violence?

Alumni Grants

[BarefootClown]

Looks to me like the law school is getting more than the engineering school...

Re:He couldnt have invented out of order execution

[anonymous loser]

Err he did.Perhaps you are thinking of compilers optimizing the order of instructions? That is not what this is about, this is about the actual hardware taking the instructions and reordering them on the fly. If my memory serves, which it usually doesn't, it requires something on the order of 250,000 transistors, so if you are asking why no one thought of this before 1989, it's because we didn't have 3 fucking billion or whatever transistors on each chip back then, so it would have increased the number of transistors by an order of magnitude.

Err no he didn't. Tomasulo invented the way we do OOE many, many years before there were "3 billion fucking transistors" on a processor (which is still a slight exaggeration even by today's standards). The first machine to employ OOE was the IBM 360/91. Here are some pictures of the first (that I know of) 360/91 in operation in 1968 at NASA. Even though the machine was (by 1968's standards) blazingly fast, the 360/91 failed miserably and only a few were actually produced. The reason this machine failed was because it was incapable of handling interrupts properly. The 360/91 only supported imprecise interrupts, which meant that instructions causing the interrupt as well as subsequent instructions could continue to execute if they were already in the pipeline. This is generally not a Good Thing(tm).

I don't know where all of the Cornell students seem to get the impression that Torng invented OOE. Hopefully this is not from Torng himself, as anyone who studies modern processor design can tell you the first thing you learn about with OOE is the Tomaluso algorithm, which although it was invented over 30 years ago is still used in modern processors largely unchanged from the original design. This is not to say that Torng had no role. He did in fact substantially facilitate OOE, by devising a system to allow mutliple instructions to issue simultaneously (as his patent claims). Torng himself pays homage to Tomasulo in the patent, referencing his paper from 1967.

Not without effect

[Aquitaine]

There was something in the area of a 4.x% tuition hike for those of us (un)fortunate enough to be a part of Cornell University. Part of this money went to professors, who, despite making less than peers at other instuttions, still make more than anyone else in the area. The cost of living in Ithaca, NY is prohibitively low, such that they can get away with paying people with masters degrees in CS and IT $30-$40 for senior positions. The professors make a bundle, but the staff/employees do not; I've worked with them for 4 years now (I am a student) and the one thing I've heard from professors is 'We get paid plenty' and the one thing I've heard from Employees is 'I am going somewhere where they will pay me.'

Not that professors don't deserve a hefty salary, considering how difficult it is to land a real teaching (not just lecturing) post at a place like that.

Re:Another suit by a university

[Shadowin]

For some reason you have a space in the URL. How about you just format the thing? Click here for the story.

Re:Copyright infringement? OT: evil modders

[aka-ed]

I am using my +1 bonus here to point out to the majority of fair-minded and level-headed moderators the exchange to which I now reply.

Note that we have a supposed "moderator" posting anonymously about why he modded somebody down, in a pompous and heavy-handed manner, including a spelling flame.

I noted this guy's own spelling mistake in his spelling flame, and justifiably accused him of crack-smoking.

Now, I stand modded for "flamebait" while the crack-smoker hides in a cloak of anonymity, yet stands ready to spring out of hiding and maul us with his mod-points. I can't even tag him as a "foe."

Foul!, I cry!

Will this injustice stand????

Will this post send good points after bad?

Ladies and gentlemen of slashdot, the decision lays in your hands. Don't let the crack-smokers get away with this!!!

Re:He couldnt have invented out of order execution

[harlows_monkeys]

Of course, if you ask me, the compiler should do reordering, but what should I know[...]

The CPU is working with the instructions that are actually executed. The compiler is working with instructions that might be executed. This should let the CPU do some optimizations that the compiler cannot. On the other hand, the compiler has more time to work on the problem than the CPU, so there should be some optimizations that the compiler can do better.

Seems to me that this means that both the compiler and the CPU should be doing this.

I find these claims doubtful

[markj02]

You can find the patent here. I find both the patent and the claims that Torng invented OOE kind of dubious. The idea of out-of-order execution goes back to at least the 1960s and has cropped up in several different areas of computer science. It may not have been applied much to microprocessors because until the late 1980s, it wasn't all that practical, and EEs are often unfamiliar with ideas in CS anyway. Overall, at least at first glance, this patent looks to me like so many recent patents where people patent ideas that have been around for a long time but simply hadn't been used in practice for practical reasons. Note that Torng has no prior patents in processor design, so it doesn't look like he had been inventing in the field much before then.

I certainly wouldn't assume outright that HP wilfully infringed this patent--HP may well have legitimate reasons to believe that this idea is in the public domain by now. The courts will have to work that out.

(BTW, the guy's name is "Torng"; shouldn't you know the name of your professor?)

also: teaching requires freedom

[markj02]

In addition, teaching involves research, and if university research ends up being proprietary, there are horrendous conflicts of interest that greatly interfere with the academic functions of the university. In order to be able to carry out the business of teaching, university research must be in the public domain, as it has traditionally been.

Re:He couldnt have invented out of order execution

[3am]

you lamer... just because you don't have what it takes to do well CS314, you blame the school.

i got a C- in it, but have some self respect and take the blame for yourself.

-a mathematician from cornell.