Sony Sued By University Over PS2 Chip

Mike Hawk writes "Cry me a river! Sony is being sued over the creation of its 'Emotion Engine' PlayStation 2 chip. The University of Wisconsin (Madison) has filed the suit claiming the "EE Core" violates a 16 year old U-Dub patent. And you guys have been gaming with 16 year old technology the whole time - those PS2 jaggies make perfect sense now..." Since this story broke on Friday, a CNET News article has added a little more information, quoting a University spokesman as saying the patent involves "advanced chipmaking technologies and has been licensed by a number of technology companies", but not Sony or the chip's co-creator, Toshiba.

Comments

Nice Timing for a lawsuit

[mrshowtime]

Gee, right after Sony sells it's 60 millionth PS2, this University finally figures out that Sony "Stole" their (ancient) technology. Sounds awfully fishy to me.

Re:Nice Timing for a lawsuit

[NanoGator]

"Gee, right after Sony sells it's 60 millionth PS2, this University finally figures out that Sony "Stole" their (ancient) technology. Sounds awfully fishy to me."

Coincidently, Sony recently changed their manufacturing process to make the systems cheaper. I couldn't tell you if that's what sparked the suit or not, but I can tell you that anything smells fishy when you are missing a good deal of detail like we are right now with this story. It's too vague.

"Good Faith" - uhhuh

[Kris_J]

"We hope the lawsuit will encourage them to bargain in good faith,"

How very SCO of you.

Perceived Legitimate Concern

[Locky]

This isn't like a soccer mom trying to cash in on frivuolous lawsuit #235 of the week, this is an actual university, and the entire board of directors must have legitimate concern to sue.

Perhaps they have a case.

Re:Perceived Legitimate Concern

[Random832]

This isn't like a soccer mom trying to cash in on frivuolous lawsuit #235 of the week, this is an actual university, and the entire board of directors must have legitimate concern to sue.

Translation:
This is the entire board of directors of an actual university trying to cash in on frivuolous [sic] lawsuit #235 of the week.

Re:Offtopic nitpick

[GMontag451]

Maybe a trademark infringement suit is in order.

Question

[Hard_Code]

Uh, why are universities patenting their research? Aren't they supposed to be releasing info for public use?

That is partially a rhetorical question, and my partial answer is that federal cuts have probably reduced grants/funds to the point that universities must (and indeed they have long since started to) patent and sell their research, sometimes with tacit partnership with industry with specific products in mind, as opposed to being "pure" research.

I'm not against the public, businesses included, profiting from university research, I'm just sort of skeptical of universities getting patents (anathema to the whole purpose of universities), and then licensing them to a select few that pay enough. Otherwise our universities just become off-site research labs for specific companies (i.e. the ones with the money).

Re:Question

[bubblewrapgrl]

I don't know about other schools, but UW-Madison has been patenting the research of professors and other researchers on campus since 1925. There is a private, non-profit organization called the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Basically, they hold patents and license them out. The money that is collected is used to fund the university and other research on campus.

Check out http://www.warf.ws for more information.

Re:Question

[xenocide2]

Actually, NSF does ocasionally offer grants to CS professors. One of my professors is part of the NSF funded Open Source Quality project. Several others have been awarded NSF grants as well. In fact, few have research directly for the DoD. A couple do have grants from popular defense contractors, like Honeywell, and I presume there are some strings attached.

So do I

[kninja]

So do I.

Our University gets money from things like this, and that is a good thing. If companies didn't have to license patents from WARF, do you think that they would donate money to the university for more research? I'm not optimistic that they would. This is a way to fund more research, which in turn attracts more top talent to Wisconsin (Madtown, I don't know where the U-Dub came from), making it a better school.

If you work in a lab here and get a patent through warf, the school gets something like 80% and the creator gets 20%. This is another reason that we have some really great professors here, it's like profit sharing.

WARF originated from a professor adding a vitamin to milk to cure rickets. The school has made so much money from that patent that it has developed into a very good institution, contributing to the world's fight.

I'm not sure that sony can say the same thing about the playstation 2, especially with all of the productivity the PS2 costs us :)