Intel Sued Over Core 2 Duo Patent Infringement

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Intel is being sued over a patent infringement alleged to be in the Core 2 Duo microprocessor design. 'The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is charging Intel Corporation with patent infringement of a University of Wisconsin-Madison invention that significantly improves the efficiency and speed of computer processing. The foundation's complaint identifies the Intel CoreTM 2 Duo microarchitecture as infringing WARF's United States Patent No. 5,781,752, entitled "Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer." WARF contacted Intel in 2001, and made repeated attempts, including meeting face-to-face with company representatives, to offer legal licensing opportunities for the technology.' The text of the complaint [PDF] is also available via WARF's site."

Comments

Eat any good books lately?

[Dachannien]

I feel strangely compelled to say: "Captain, I protest! I am not a merry man!"

Re:Eat any good books lately?

[CodeBuster]

Is that before or after you smash the lute against the tree?

Re:Eat any good books lately?

[Drinking Bleach]

Before.

Huh?

[jdigriz]

What has the Son of Mog done this time?

Re:Huh?

[Vectronic]

That should be modded Funny, more than Offtopic.

WARF quickly became Worf (Star Trek) in my head, soon followed by swordplay...

Re:Huh?

[dgatwood]

No, that's Barf, short for Barfolomew. He's a mog. Half man, half dog.

Re:Huh?

[EntropyXP]

Picard: Mr Warf, raise shields!!
Warf: Captain, shields are not responding, a patent troll seems to have infested the system.
Picard: Well, I'll be in the captain's room, changing my shorts.

Re:Huh?

[cstdenis]

Thats Mogh.

Re:Huh?

[gorba]

Star Trek and Intel... definitely "stuff that matters"

Not a Troll then?

[erroneus]

I have been slashdot conditioned to think that every patent suit is a patent troll trying to collect on obvious ideas from big companies. But from the background on the story, it would seem that this is not the case and that it has been on-going since 2001. That's a very long time to mess around before resorting to a law suit. How long does a patent last?

Re:Not a Troll then?

[milsoRgen]

"We are disappointed with Intel's lack of response in resolving this matter, and while we were not anxious to use the courts to enforce our patent rights, we have no other recourse given our duty to protect the intellectual property of our inventors and the university." It also says that the patent was granted in '98, so I think they (WARF) were being pretty fair about things thus far.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[paitre]

17-20 years from time of issuance, IIRC.

This is, of course, why software patents are bad - they're usually obviated in fewer than 5.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[Otter]

It's probably not a good idea to generalize about any subject from stories that get posted here, but while WARF is certainly not a "patent troll" by the proper definition of the term, they are extremely aggressive about broadly enforcing their stem cell patents, and it wouldn't surprise me if this is more of the same.

Actually, I'm curious why the only two coherent posts at the time of this writing are jumping to the defense of this patent; one of them noting that he hasn't read the link but that nonetheless "it sounds like this patent might actually be a reasonable one". Normally everyone would be jumping in with thoughts like "Isn't a washing machine prior art?"

Re:Not a Troll then?

[AndGodSed]

In South Africa a patent needs to be renewed on a yearly basis. Not sure about over on your side of the pond meh. In any case it would seem as if Intel was trying to wear these guys down, or let the patent lapse.

Either way, it's refreshing to see patent laws working in favor of legitimate complainants for a change...

Re:Not a Troll then?

[canuck57]

Not every patent is a troll. And I have no clue if this one is or not.

But when I saw this the thought came to me. The very same companies that support the patent system and produce a product are going to get sued out of existence. Or end up raising the costs of their products. An example, say $100 for the processor, and $60 for lawyers and $50 for patent charges, total $210 per processor.

Now what is going to happen is the Intel's and the Microsoft companies are going to realize all a long, /.ers are right. Scrap the patent system or modify it so the patent has to be significant and revolutionary. Not just some twist on an existing technology. Which is really the problem here.

And if I was a CEO of a tech company, I would move off shore to a country that does not value the needless waste of court time and moneys. And setup a US subsidiary that can pass on the costs to US residents while the rest of the world does not have to pay. If they do not, the competition might do it for them.

It is nice to see the big boys caught in their own traps.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[geekoid]

assuming they actually have a leg to stand on.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[iamhassi]

"It also says that the patent was granted in '98, so I think they (WARF) were being pretty fair about things thus far."

And let's not forget it's extremely expensive to file lawsuits. If anything it's in the best interest of the patent holder to come to some agreement rather than go to court. Sure they'll get their court costs back if they win, but who can afford to drop tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few years?

Trust me, unless they're incredibly wealthy no one wants to go to court, especially against someone with $$$$. I've filed lawsuits and even when what they did is obviously illegal and I'll easily win in court I still have to decide if it's worth paying thousands of dollars in attorney fees and court costs over the course of a few months just to get several thousand back in the end. They really need to up small claims to $10,000+ because everything seems to be over 3 grand now days.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[drinkypoo]

FTFA:

The technology, patented in 1998, was developed by four researchers at the UW-Madison, including Professor Gurindar Sohi, currently the chair of the university's Computer Science Department.

Personally I think the nice people at WARF can go fuck themselves. That technology was developed with public funds and/or tax deductible donations to an educational institution and in my opinion the patent should belong to the people of the USA, because otherwise you provide too much economic incentive for the schools to simply be work farms for nearby corporations (or simply those with deep pockets.)

I understand that you need private money to do work, because we spend our money bombing people instead of on education. But this is all quite ridiculous.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[eabrek]

How fair is it to demand money for something you didn't contribute to?

Disclaimer: I used to work for Intel, and I'm familiar with a lot of the CS/CA people at Madison. I also own Intel stock, and am not looking forward to another $500 million payout to lawyers.

The memory disambiguation table is a variant on a branch predictor (I'm not going to give the exact Intel algorithm). It's obvious. The only reason no one has done it before is that the benefits didn't outweigh the implementation (and especially, validation) costs. Core 2 is a big enough machine that it's worthwhile.

The sad thing is that Intel has paid a lot of money into Madison. It's a good source for computer architecture interns and graduating PhD's. Most of the profs aren't happy about having to patent their stuff. I doubt they're any happier about university lawyers attacking their patron.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[russotto]

Actually, I'm curious why the only two coherent posts at the time of this writing are jumping to the defense of this patent; one of them noting that he hasn't read the link but that nonetheless "it sounds like this patent might actually be a reasonable one". Normally everyone would be jumping in with thoughts like "Isn't a washing machine prior art?"

Probably because the patent isn't for "A mechanism to remove soil from clothing by agitation in an aqueous surfactant solution".

Or, because unlike software patents, most slashdot users aren't and don't pretend to be familiar with the details of semiconductor design. So even if it is as obvious (to those skilled in the art of semiconductor design) and non-novel as the typical software patent, it isn't obvious to the typical slashdotter.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[Free_Meson]

An example, say $100 for the processor, and $60 for lawyers and $50 for patent charges, total $210 per processor.

Your numbers are off by a few orders of magnitude. If intel did spend $60/u on lawyers, lost, and only had to pay $50/u for a license then they'd probably be able to get a chunk of that back through malpractice.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[mabhatter654]

the problem is that in 1998 it wasn't possible to MAKE such a processor, by any means. This is the main flaw of the current system, that you can get such a patent on blueprints, and not for actually MAKING the product. When somebody else does the work to make a device and you can get a patent for "kind of like it". The issue is "does it work" as absolutely described? If there's not enough data, or they're relying on a future "breakthru" to "make it work" then it's not patentable. The same with software patents, if there's no source code, it shouldn't be valid if you can't touch it to see how it works.

Edison knew you needed vacuum, filament and electricity to make a light bulb.. under current standards he could have made a non-working mock-up and sued anybody that tried to actually MAKE one. In that day, you didn't get the patent till it WORKED. That meant 5,000 trials until the damn thing could be demonstrated. Same with Radio, Same with telephone... It was a race with the COMPLETED project to get the patent.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[gnasher719]

The memory disambiguation table is a variant on a branch predictor (I'm not going to give the exact Intel algorithm). It's obvious. The only reason no one has done it before is that the benefits didn't outweigh the implementation (and especially, validation) costs. Core 2 is a big enough machine that it's worthwhile.

Here is how I understand what Intel does from the publicly available description: The processor often encounters load instructions, where the memory in question may or may not have been modified by a previous write instruction. (The "may or may not" case happens when a previous store instruction has not finished calculating its address yet. The case that the processor _knows_ the data has been modified is something entirely different). This situation happens quite often, and quite often the store instruction did _not_ modify the data at the load address.

In this situation, the processor cannot just execute the instruction. It can use out-of-order execution, delaying the load instruction, but out-of-order execution has its hands full with _real_ dependencies and it would help if it didn't have to bother with possible dependencies that don't actually happen. Therefore Intel allows the processor to continue with conditional execution.

The text of the patent covers a lot about how to recover from wrong speculative execution, but this is no problem at all. All the hardware for that is available already because of branch prediction. With branch prediction, the processor has to keep track of speculatively executed instructions, undo them if necessary, and continue execution at a different program counter (in case of a branch through a jump table where the destination is predicted incorrectly, restart execution at the jump instruction. In case of a conditional branch predicted to be taken incorrectly, continue after the branch instruction. In this case, continue with the load instruction). So half of the patent isn't infringed upon at all.

The patent also seems to suggest that one should look at the store instructions to make a decision whether to speculatively execute the load or to wait. It doesn't look to me like Intel is doing this. It seems that load instructions that are ready to execute except for store/load hazards are classified as: Safe to execute, known not safe, unknown. "Safe to execute" executes. "Known not safe" doesn't execute. "Not known" can use mostly the same mechanism as branch prediction. I would probably try to actually use the same hardware as for branch prediction. That would trivially allow multi-level approaches (for example, loading a [i] can execute if a previous branch around a statement "if (...) a [i] = x" was executed, and mustn't execute if the branch was not executed. Branch prediction does that kind of thing already, so that would come for free.

The only thing that has to be changed is the mechanism that marks a prediction as correct or false. Usually that is a compare instruction setting some condition codes, here it is an instruction calculating the address of a store instruction.

Now I cannot decide if what they have patented is obvious or not. However, the mechanism that I have described here _is_ obvious as shown by the fact that I, a programmer and not a hardware designer, and therefore not an expert in the field, can describe it. If what Intel does is what I have described then what they do is obvious.

I'll mention a different invention that is just a tiny invention, obvious _after_ you read it and patented (but not obvious _before_ you read it): Branch prediction predicts whether a branch is taken or not. It uses tables, and tables run out of space. When that happens, a branch will use a prediction that was actually intended for a different branch instruction - with not very good results. To improve this, you do a (trivial) static prediction. Then you don't store in your tables whether the branch is taken or not, you store whether it matches the static prediction or not. Quite often (80%

Re:Not a Troll then?

[strredwolf]

The problem with that is that Madison/WARF did approach Intel with the info, and wanted to get into an agreement -- but Intel didn't take 'em up on the offer. IBM went the same route, and eventually got into an agreement after the lawsuit papers were filed.

Once again, history repeats itself.

Re:Not a Troll then?

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

The issue in this case is to patent a design for a system - something that makes sense to me. If you go ahead and design a great application and I troll the patent office looking for good ideas, who's to stop me from stealing your idea and using my massive resources to actually create what you couldn't, or faster than you could? The problem for this case isn't that it wasn't possible at the time, but rather it wasn't possible for that institution at the time.

How much code can you "touch", anyway? Software is something that is intangible by definition - just a set of instructions. In the software world, designs (if done so detailed) can transform directly into the product. Requirements and designs are, in fact, meant to describe how the product works, which fits pretty well what you're saying there.

But, if you want to get down to the specifics, a patent is to cover an invention, which is "an object, process, or technique". So, you can even patent processes or techniques for doing anything. Yes, this may seem to be flawed, and yes there are lots of issues with pre-existing technology, but that's how it works. The patent system does well for underdogs who need to protect their inventions, but unfortunately also does well for trolls.

Could this one be legit?

[danaris]

I haven't read the article, and doubt I would have any chance of understanding the details of the patent, but from the summary it sounds like this patent might actually be a reasonable one: it's a particular method for increasing speed in a particular part of a processor, not "a patent on speeding up computers".

For once, might the patent system actually be doing what it's supposed to?

Dan Aris

Re:Could this one be legit?

[brian0918]

"For once, might the patent system actually be doing what it's supposed to?"

Clearly not, if these people had to fight Intel for 7 years and still haven't gotten a cent for licensing.

Re:Could this one be legit?

[Reverse Gear]

I haven't RTF yet, but I think you are right, this one might very well be legit.

Just the fact that this is about the microprocessor design and not about software makes it sound much more sensible than much of the other patent crap that is coming up here on /.

Re:Could this one be legit?

[jandrese]

Well, a lot of the software patents are obvious because a lot of Slashdotters work with software and can tell on the face of something if its something you would have come up with in 5 minutes given the same problem. I doubt there are quite as many chip microcode developers on Slashdot.

That said, the description is kind of vague. Does it mean creating a table of opcodes and doing branch prediction based on the table? If so that would probably be patent troll area. My guess is that it's something far more clever though and stands a decent chance of being a good patent.

Re:Could this one be legit?

[a_claudiu]

I didn't read the article or the patent either but calculating the average number of letters per word in the summary I believe the opposite (It is definitely odd)

Re:Could this one be legit?

[SlashWombat]

Using tables to optimise some aspect of hardware certainly predates 1998 by a long stretch. Applying this to a particular aspect of a CPU and claiming it is novel seems disingenuous to me!

For that matter, several hardware synthesis over the years have allowed for table input. FPGA's all essentially rely on "tables" as the basic combinatorial logic element is a ram array. (IE: A table). In fact, the configuration of all FPGA's, CPLD's, etc are "table" driven.

I would view microcode within a CPU as being table driven as well.

I also wonder about the funding that paid for this "research". I tend to get annoyed when public funding has been used to feather a "private" persons nest. Many thousands of people "own" patents that hinge on publicly funded research. Not just in electronics, but in medicine, etc. Do others think this is fair?

I would suggest that should Intel decide to fight, the eventual outcome will be that the patent will be overturned.

Re:Could this one be legit?

[ScrewMaster]

It's too early to tell. If the patent is legit (and I don't know enough about the subject to even venture an opinion, I'll leave that to the rest of you) then the WARF people have only now begun to fight, by filing a lawsuit. They were apparently trying to avoid that if they could. If they win, can they get back payments for fees Intel didn't pay while infringing?

I don't get it

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I read the complaint, and went through the patent. I didn't see any circuit diagrams, just some flowcharts and a lot of descriptions of them. It seems to me there's a vast difference between patenting a flowchart and building a circuit in silicon - but that's just me. I'm gonna chalk this up as a patent troll on an idea - not an invention.

Re:I don't get it

[93 Escort Wagon]

I read the complaint, and went through the patent. I didn't see any circuit diagrams, just some flowcharts and a lot of descriptions of them. It seems to me there's a vast difference between patenting a flowchart and building a circuit in silicon - but that's just me. Well, you see, the lawsuit is against an Intel executive's Powerpoint presentation covering the Core 2 Duo - not the actual chip design.

Re:I don't get it

[bunratty]

An idea can be an invention. An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty. This looks like a technique for building faster processors, and thus is an invention. It also looks like it is far from obvious, and took considerable research to invent. Those researchers made money, so why not let them license their technology to other companies so they can make money to do more research?

Re:I don't get it

[KDR_11k]

Maybe it's not a patent of a low-level piece of hardware? Hardware development these days happens a lot in high-level languages, just like other programming so a low-level implementation may not be of any real use, depending on how high-level this optimization is. In other words, it's like demanding a binary (or assembly code) for an algorithm, not gonna be pretty.

Re:I don't get it

[stevesliva]

I didn't see any circuit diagrams, just some flowcharts and a lot of descriptions of them. It seems to me there's a vast difference between patenting a flowchart and building a circuit in silicon

The invention is the idea, so a flowchart works. The requirement is that you've "reduced the idea to practice." So in this case a logic circuit simulation (not hardware) or more abstract behavioral simulation would be sufficient.

So basically to patent an idea, you should demonstrate that it will work, not that you can make it yourself. If you thought of it first and wanted to patent a Dyson Sphere, you could, even though no one will be making one any time soon. I'm sure many patents have preceeded prototypes.

Re:I don't get it

[kent.dickey]

I only briefly read the patent (due to triple damages for knowingly infringing a patent, it's best to not read any patents ever), and although it's not a typical troll, it has the problem of most patents--it's not that special of an idea.

I worked with the HP PA8000 processor since around 1994. It was an out-of-order CPU, meaning it would execute past cache misses or other long delays to find future instructions which it could do now to save time later. The big win for out-of-order is that it can start cache misses for future work early, acting as a prefetch to bring data into the cache.

Unfortunately, sometimes bad speculation can cause a loop of instructions to result in future instructions causing misses that won't be needed, or other bad effects like starting a divide, and blocking the divide unit for a long time for a divide that won't be used. Recovering from this bad speculation takes time and so it's a performance loss. These are second-order effects--the out-of-order is a big enough win that it almost always outweighs any drawbacks.

All current major CPU designs use out-of-order execution, so everyone's aware of these issues now. I remember at the time looking at a bus trace of some code running on the PA8000 and remarking to the CPU designers at HP that they could improve performance by trying to avoid mis-speculating over and over. At that time, it wasn't worth the silicon space to try to fix it. I'm saying this to show it's obvious speculation can cause some performance issues.

And this is the problem with patents--technology changed so that now it's worth it to spend silicon to fix this problem, to eek out another 1-2% performance. And once it's been decided to fix it, there are some obvious ideas. Like modify the branch prediction hardware to add some state to track that a branch is not being predicted well, to tone down execution after that branch. Or doing whatever it is this patent says to do.

But since academic research often doesn't concern itself with practicalities as silicon real estate, it doesn't surprise me that some university has looked into this problem before Intel. And patents are a way to show you're doing research. However, ask 10 CPU designers how to fix bad speculation, and I would be surprised if several of them didn't give an idea that would infringe on this patent. So is the patent really novel or non-obvious? (I'm aware of the legal definition of obvious, which almost always makes any patent legally non-obvious).

However, I don't necessarily have much sympathy for Intel since they use patents to bar competitors from directly interfacing with their chips. If you control a bus specification, you can add an oddball design quirk, patent it, and thereby block competitors from using your bus. I tried to find the patent for "Intel burst order", but couldn't find it in a few minutes of trying.

Intel is probably a good target to sue for patent infringement because they rely on patents and so are less likely to want to set any precedents weakening their own patents. Generally, they go for cross-licensing, which won't make much sense in this case, though.

Re:I don't get it

[treeves]

I'm curious. How can it be proven that you read something, without, for example, a signed declaration that you read it, as in the case of a contract?

Re:I don't get it

[kent.dickey]

Assuming this is an honest question, when placed under oath, you are supposed to tell the truth, not just what you know the other lawyers can prove.

If someone believes otherwise, you probably already know which technology companies you'd feel right at home at.

A more funny response would be to pick up a phone and over the dialtone shout and ask the NSA for my web browsing history. I didn't just give that answer since I'm annoyed at how many people seem to think lying and cheating are OK.

Re:I don't get it

[KDR_11k]

Hm, blocking the divider? Isn't that thing pipelined or was pipelining not available back then? In an exercise at university we were using a pipelined divider, you could feed one word per cycle into the thing so throwing a wrong word in there would only cause a delay of one cycle until you can throw the next one in, only if you've got a dependency on the result you'd have to wait but if it's executing two paths parallely there should be no dependence, right?

Re:I don't get it

[kent.dickey]

Sure, it's easy to make a pipeline divide, but to pipeline 17-60 stages for an uncommon instruction is not usually done. It also would complicate pipeline control to have such a long pipeline delay.

Intel hasn't pipelined its divide, as can be seen in the instruction throughput numbers in Appendix C of this manual: http://www.intel.com/design/processor/manuals/248966.pdf

The throughput for divide shows some CPUs having two divide units, but none have pipelining. However, they could add an abort operation to kill a pending long-latency divide as well, but I don't know if they do that either. Since Intel has been bitten very badly by a divide bug, I could see them being a bit shy adding risky optimizations in this area.

Re:Another good example...

[Vectronic]

Patents (copyright, trademarks, etc) are not bad, they give credit where credit is due...

its most (but not all) of the laws surrounding patents and copyrights, that are bad.

Honor huh?

[techpawn]

'The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is charging Intel Corporation with patent infringement

I KNEW we couldn't trust the Klingon!

Re:Honor huh?

[jd]

Sigh. The Klingons run AMD, the Romulins run Intel. That is obvious to anyone who has worked at Intel. So it makes perfect sense for the Klingons to launch an attack on a Romulin convoy in the Legalis Patentus system.

The way I see it

[Butisol]

Intel is like, "No I will not make out with you! Did ya hear that? WARF wants to make out with me in the middle of a die shrink. You got Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer Man up there talking about God knows what and all WARF can talk about is making out with me. I'm here to make Core 2 Duos, everybody, not to make out with you. Go on with the patent."

The Final Frontier

[digitalderbs]

Whoever says that Klingons can't resolve things in a civilized manner are clearly wrong.

Prior smackdown

[c0d3h4x0r]

WARF contacted Intel in 2001 ...and said in a booming resentful voice, "A WARRIOR does NOT dishonorably take ideas from OTHERS!"

Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[eldavojohn]

Well, I've noticed that when it's an educational institution, then it's not a troll. Filed by a lawyer in Marshall, Texas means troll for sure though. These rules are weird. I guess it all depends on your point of view.

Although, you should note that a couple decades ago, universities were not well funded so some senators passed a bill that would allow them to keep patents. Why not, they do the research? Today, universities are still building those portfolios. So the joke is kind of on the companies. If they were smart, they should have been dumping millions into universities in the form of donations to keep patents in the corporate sector.

You can bet that as you start to see what was once cutting edge theory be implemented the universities will have the last laugh and hopefully the most cash. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing it any other way but I'm still paying off my college loans. It would make me a happy man to see an HD DVD/Blu Ray player cost $100 more while poor people can go to college for virtually free. But I think a lot of people would call me some sort of communist for that and that I'd be stagnating the economy or some such theory that I can't comprehend. Regardless, I'd be willing to buy shares in certain universities if I could. Imagine what those portfolios are going to start to bring in in revenue!

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[MightyYar]

It would make me a happy man to see an HD DVD/Blu Ray player cost $100 more while poor people can go to college for virtually free. "Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."

Actually, I don't think education can be a bad thing. Indoctrination, on the other hand...

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[evanbd]

Just because it's not a troll doesn't mean it's a good patent. It may be that the solution is obvious to one "skilled in the art" even though no one seriously considered the problem before. Just because the university thought of it first doesn't mean it's a good patent.

Of course, I haven't looked at the details of the patent or the case. It may well be a blatant attempt by Intel to rip off a clever idea from the university. My guess is that reality is somewhere in between...

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[dgatwood]

The way I see it, if you offer to license a technology and then five years later, the company starts using that technology in a new design without licensing it, chances are, the person who holds the patent is not a patent troll. Patent trolls patent something obvious, wait in silence for somebody to do what is covered by their patent, then offer to license and/or sue. If they're offering to license it before the company they're trying to license it to thinks of the idea, unless the idea is fairly trivial, they aren't trolls....

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Penguinisto]

W You can bet that as you start to see what was once cutting edge theory be implemented the universities will have the last laugh and hopefully the most cash. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing it any other way but I'm still paying off my college loans. It would make me a happy man to see an HD DVD/Blu Ray player cost $100 more while poor people can go to college for virtually free.

As someone who once was a collegiate instructor and employee, I can say for certain that no self-respecting board-of-regents-member college would even think of lowering tuition, for any reason. Scholarships, sure... as long as the money comes out of somebody else's wallet. Student financial aid? Again, they love it - but on the same premise as Scholarships. Work-Study programs? Okay, but it's the equivalent of getting offshore-priced labor on their part.

No, my friend... no way in Hell you'd ever see a Uni drop tuition pricing in response to a flush of patent-money. They'd rather spend the dough on a new football stadium, or on perks for the tenured and administration.

The one and only condition that would see a tuition price drop is in response to a drop in head-count, or in response to any new competition (e.g. University of Phoenix opening a new campus in the same town or city...)

/P

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

I wish I was a "ditch digger." I have an engineering degree, which apparently entitles me to such things as straight no time-and-a-half overtime and less wage than any unskilled union laborer.

Would I be happy digging ditches, probably not, but it does get a little daunting when everyone I know who went to college makes less than those who didn't.

Can I really be this bitter? I am only 28.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[arcanelogic]

I happen to recognize two of the patent owners: Andreas Moshovos and Gurindar Sohi. Guri in particular is an established member of the Computer Architecture research community. He's worked on many different aspects of speculation in hardware. The claim in the patent infringement is that the work on "Table-based Speculation.." was presented at Intel and attempts were made by the authors to negotiate a license for the technology. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some merit to this claim.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[rbmyers]

It would take a whole lot more than reading that patent, and a whole lot more than reading Hennessey and Patterson, to know if Wisconsin had something it could collect on. That is to say, you'd have to know a detailed history of work in the field. That would mean being familiar with dozens of IEEE and ACM journal articles, something a patent examiner in Washington would never have time to do. That is to say, aggressive schemes for instruction parallelism is a huge body of work, and the patentability of the idea as a matter of fact is surely to be in dispute. The fact that Hennessey and Patterson attributes the idea to Wisconsin, Madison is a big piece of evidence, but not necessarily dispositive. Wisconsin has been a big player in this kind of work, and they (obviously) have graduates at Intel. In any case, the authors Hennessey and Patterson would be in a fairly select group of people who could offer authoritative comment. Then there is the question of whether the Intel design actually infringes. Finally, it's worth noting that many patent disputes likes this one are settled by cross-licensing. Without such practices, Intel, IBM, and AMD and who knows who else would probably be in court endlessly. Companies collect patents as a way of fending off lawsuits like this one. That tactic doesn't work, though, with organizations that don't make anything, in which respect, a university is disturbingly similar to a patent troll. That is to say, whether universities are good guys or not, they can have the same kind of disruptive effect as patent trolls, because they have no incentive not to sue, other than the cost of lawyers. The lawyers take the case on contingency fee and the lawyers are the patent trolls. The fact that the patent belongs to a university in the end means very little.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[bmajik]

It would make me a happy man to see an HD DVD/Blu Ray player cost $100 more while poor people can go to college for virtually free. But I think a lot of people would call me some sort of communist for that and that I'd be stagnating the economy or some such theory that I can't comprehend.

Well, yeah, the way this is normally discussed, the conversation usually turns towards someones irrational communist leanings about how "some people" should pay for "everybody else" to go to college. Nevermind that not everyone ought to go to college at all, much less because others were forced at gunpoint to pay for it.

But that's not what I'm replying to you for..

Regardless, I'd be willing to buy shares in certain universities if I could. Imagine what those portfolios are going to start to bring in in revenue!

This is actually brilliant, and is quite the opposite of communism. And infact this may very well be the answer to the problem you're talking about in the first part of your post.

Universities currently get a fair bit of financing from private donors, from athletics, and from taxes. So much of tuition is subsidized for one reason or another that lots of people go that perhaps ought not to. There's a demand glut, so to speak, and so there is little incentive for a university to do anything other than expand and raise prices.

A very nice thing about what you suggest is that that investment revenue can be re-invested by the university, for the university, to fund scholarships for promising students. Top flight schools like MIT effectively have this arrangement -- if you get into MIT (because of your qualifications), you WILL be able to afford it, because a variety of interested university backers will see that the money appears.

Generalizing this a bit, a university with disposable income from the past results of its research may have an incentive to recruit promising new talent and thus subsidize the education of the best and brightest minds.

And all of this would be done without coercion by the state. Different universities would have entirely different criteria for who they beleive is promising, and how they think their scholarship money ought to be spent.

This is part of a solution of how people go to college without making society at large pay for just anybody to go for any reason. Investors will choose which universities to invest in, based on selection criteria, past performance, etc, and that will tend to cause universities to spend their money a bit more wisely.

There are a variety of other privatized education funding models discussed by Friedman, etc, but this one is one I've not thought about before. Thanks for mentioning it.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Anonymous Custard]

I have an engineering degree, which apparently entitles me to such things as straight no time-and-a-half overtime and less wage than any unskilled union laborer.

...It does get a little daunting when everyone I know who went to college makes less than those who didn't.

Your college degree in engineering does not mean that you automatically provide valuable engineering services to a company.

Your engineering degree only entitles you to write "I have an Engineering Degree" on your job applications. After that, it's up to you to land a good job, impress the right people, earn raises and promotions, or create an invention and monetize it, etc.

If you're truly making less wage than any "unskilled union laborer", then perhaps your business skills are lacking? You might be a genius engineer, but it still takes business smarts to turn that into a profit for you.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

Union labors here in Chicago make over $33/hour. That is a base salary of $68,640 which does not include pension, sick time or medical, thats another $10-15 an hour or so. You are now looking around $100k a year. Now add in overtime pay.

Don't believe me, here is the latest union wage rates for Cook County, pdf warning, http://www.dot.state.il.us/wagerates/011808/area1.pdf

My compensation is right in line with my field and experience and right along the same lines as my colleagues, none of us make even $80k. My point is that those "ditch diggers" although frowned upon apparently, probably make more that most do. How many college graduates do you know that start off earning much higher than $50,000?

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[halber_mensch]

Your college degree in engineering does not mean that you automatically provide valuable engineering services to a company.

I wish I had points for you. These days every kid out of high school seems to be shuffling off to college with mom and dad's credit card to get a business management or marketing degree, boozing it up on thursday nights and missing tests on friday mornings, with every expectation that when they finally get through their 4 years of drunken stupor they will emerge into a world that wants to throw money at them for being so highly educated and accustomed to privilege. In reality, however, the degree itself is usually in and of itself simply a free pass to the interview, not an indication of ability.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[davidsyes]

Well, I won't be one of those angling to call you a communist. I, too, would rather see school free if it meant the DVD players and other electronics cost 10-40% more.

But, a corollary I can imagine is that if corporations fund schools, they'll nag the government/s for major tax breaks. Then, they'll offer lower salaries "since your school was free for you...", and then government might find some weasel means to increase public taxes to make up for the taxes major corporations excused themselves from by threatening reelection cancellation for innumerable politicians...

But, OTOH, I can think of maybe 10 more ways the public money spent over the last 8 years can be better spent rebuilding infrastructure, employing the under-employed, and making near-free schooling possible without endearing universities to big corporations.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Surt]

Wow ... I have to wonder what you're seeing.

A sanitation worker makes maybe 30k:
http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Sanitation+Worker&cty=&sid=&kw=Sanitation&jn=jn013&edu=&tid=94858

His degreed supervisor makes more like 50k:
http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Sanitation+Supervisor&cty=&sid=&kw=Sanitation&jn=jn037&edu=&tid=82245

A warehouse laborer makes even less (20k):
http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Warehouse+Laborer&cty=&sid=&kw=Union+Laborer&jn=jn045&edu=&tid=232

How much are the unskilled union laborers you know making?

The lowest paid engineering-degreed person I know makes 45k, and could make considerably more if they wanted to move to a more expensive city (obviously, there's a tradeoff there).

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

I provided a link with all of the wage rates in my previous post. No union worker makes less than I believe $24/hour + benefits. Most skilled union workers e.g. plumbers or electricians make about $40/hour. This is in Cook County Illinois, which if you are unfamiliar with the area, is where Chicago is located. Unions own the city, but still, they make better money than pretty much anyone with an undergraduate degree and less than 10 years of experience. I make significantly more than $45k, but still less than the $85k I would be making now if I became an electrician or plumber, and they get paid while they are apprentices, not paying out $100,000 for their education.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[19thNervousBreakdown]

A close friend of mine sandblasts & repaints bridges for a living. Showed $98k on his W2, which doesn't include the insane retirement plan, vacation and medical benefits he receives that all FAR, FAR outstrip anything I've ever heard of in the white-collar world, and with the under-the-table kind of things that go on in their industry, just imagine what he actually made.

We don't normally compare paychecks, but an engineering-degreed friend of mine drunkenly told me about the big raise he got after 3 years at the company. Before his 12% raise he was making $45k.

Warehouse and sanitation is about the lowest of the low, you can hardly compare that to the "average" manual laborer. Also, maybe your friends are just successful.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Surt]

Sorry, I missed your other post. I found it now.
I had thought you were discussing unskilled labor. Skilled laborers like electricians definitely make more, though again, you have to get through your apprenticeship, and then you have to fill your hours. Getting 40 hours of work a week in those kinds of jobs isn't trivial, and there are certainly other downsides to those jobs. But yes, the top of the field in skilled labor makes about the same as the middle of the field in degreed labor. But: skilled labor tops out. For an electrician to increase his earning power either requires the risk of starting a contracting business (in which case he is no longer being paid as labor, and an engineer can start his own business too), or pushing more hours (which an engineer can do also ... look into consulting work). An engineer has other options: get stock in a startup (less risk than starting your own), go into contracting (higher per hour wages with less certainty), accept a position with travel requirements (higher salary), train yourself in a high demand area (most areas of engineering have superstars who are payed $250k+ in salary).
Having a degree certainly isn't a magic ticket to wealth. You do still have to work hard and be talented, in some ways more so than the skilled laborer, but the potential rewards are much greater, and beyond that ... would you be intellectually satisfied working day after day pushing wire through holes in the frame of a house?

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Surt]

I suspect your friend is a skilled laborer, I had thought the discussion was about unskilled labor. My mistake I think. Skilled labor does reasonably well in monetary terms, degreed engineers do need to work to get ahead, being successful is not conferred with the degree.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Penguinisto]

any decent football programs brings in millions more than they spend. just in case you thought it was wasted money, it usually is not.

While that condition is true for only (roughly) 36-48 universities and colleges nation-wide, I do not argue that those who have a prominent place in, say, the NCAA (US football org) can rake in megabucks per year. (Everyone else scrapes by as best they can, or they simply do without).

Meanwhile, we have, as perfect example, these beasties (PDF). Don't ask about the price tags.

Granted that at least half of these are working hospitals, but the majority of the inbound dough isn't coming out of the Ute football program, nor is the majority coming from private/alumni donations... them thar's your tuition (and tax) monies at work. This is the same UofU that has one hell of a large business and IP incubation program, and a 300+ acre, 37-building complex referred to as Research Park. Note that I'm not picking on the UofU per se, but it is a place that I am highly familiar with, as it is a fellow BoR member as my former employer's of long ago.

(by the by, the UofU is also incidentally one of the very first nodes on what eventually became the Internet - the other node was at UC Berkeley).

/P

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

I am a consultant and do work more than 40 a week in most weeks. I do fairly well and not starving by any means. I guess my reaction is just to the notion that you have to go to school to make a decent wage, nope, you just have to work hard. I also was referring to unskilled laborer's, knock this wall down, move this pipe here types still get $27-$33/hour around here. I also understand that there isn't much room for growth, labor rates for an electrician with 5 years experience is the same as the guy with 20 assuming he is still doing journeyman work, and supervisors really don't get that much more, last time I checked its only a $1 or $2 an hour difference.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Surt]

That's interesting. Where I am, the 'knock wall down' 'move this pipe' people are mostly illegal aliens being paid in many cases below the minimum wage. But that may be because it is california, and we have a huge pool of illegal aliens competing to do that kind of work.
I certainly agree with you that going to school is not a requirement for doing decently or even well in the world. I do think it is fairly vital if you want to get paid to use your brain rather than your hands, though, and I do think it opens up a lot of opportunities at the higher end.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Original Replica]

less wage than any unskilled union laborer....everyone I know who went to college makes less than those who didn't.

Everyone makes less than the unskilled union laborer, or less than the skilled union laborer? Unskilled labor tends to be cheap, because basically anyone who is healthy can do it, skilled labor can be quite expensive, because so few people want to be laborers as a career choice. You can make a decent living as an iron worker. But with that comes a career working in all weather doing potentially dangerous work. If your job is making you bitter then maybe it's your employer, maybe it's your career. If you suspect that's it's the latter, I would suggest getting a few weekends of work unloading trucks. You will either discover that you love getting paid for physical work, or you will have a fresh appreciation for your current job. Full disclosure: I am an IATSE(union) stagehand and I load/unload trucks on a regular basis. Sometimes in the rain or snow, frequently without a loading dock. I love my job.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

I am not bitter, just stating fact. There is no way I could walk high steel or be happy wrist deep in a sewage pipe. Thats the trade-off I guess. The iron workers I know all make well over 100k a year, but they are always dead tired and have to work 6-10's a week. Plus I am in Chicago, union wages are not the same anywhere, and I believe that it is either the highest paid or up there with New York as far as wages are concerned. Even the construction flaggers on the highway are making $35 a hour.

I rather enjoy my job as well, I design mechanical and plumbing systems in anything from condo's to hospitals and LEED AP certified, have an EI license and eligible to take the PE test this year. I am not some flunkie that barely made it through school, as insinuated in previous posts, I had a 3.5GPA. I have a few gold certified LEED buildings under my design and another going through commissioning as we speak.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Hognoxious]

Probably an element of danger money too. It ewouldn't surprise me if the rate was 50% higher for the same activity, but done while swinging on a wire.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Anonymous Custard]

True, I would think only a select few college grads make much over 50k their first year.

But as for that pdf: I wouldn't call those jobs unskilled (posthole diggers, but also masons, electricians, asbestos removers), and as contractors they might not get to work 40 hours a week every week.

Maybe you and your colleagues could start a union? :)

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Murphy Murph]

I have an engineering degree, which apparently entitles me to such things as straight no time-and-a-half overtime and less wage than any unskilled union laborer.

In my experience working with union laborer's here in Ohio - an "unskilled" union construction worker would be part of the laborer's union - and starting at around $17 an hour - depending on job. This worker would rarely see overtime, and would be subject to forced travel (without per diem) and likely be called out of the union hall for work less than 1600 hours a year.
An equipment operator, on the other hand, rarely sits in the hall - 2000 hour years come easily. They still often do not get per diem, but can often stay busy close-to-home. They are not unskilled labor though. They have sacrificed years in training, more years sucking mud as the FNG, and only come to make $20-25 an hour though lots of hard work.
Your blanket dismissal of these vital workers pisses me off.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Murphy Murph]

Wow - just saw the pdf you linked. Perhaps a move to Chicago is in order?

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

Yea, now do you see my perspective. The Chicago Building Code is written specifically for unions, we are the only town that I know of that still uses cast iron with lead and oakum for waste piping. PVC wouldn't take nearly the amount of time to install.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[Murphy Murph]

Cast iron is quieter, and what is used at Ohio State University for all classrooms, for whatever reason. (Doubt the noise issue comes into play through walls.)
In fact, I don't think I've worked in a single concrete and steel building which didn't use cast iron drain/vent lines.

Lead/oakum joints - can't speak to.

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[j79zlr]

Yes cast iron is quieter simply due to the density of it. A lot of places still require cast iron for the main building sewer since it does last basically forever. Generally they are hubless pipe & fittings or hub and spigot with neoprene sleeves. Lead and oakum is remarkably more time consuming compared to other methods. You can't speak of lead and oakum because unless the building was built prior to 1950 or in Chicago, you won't find it.

I've never concerned myself with noise spec'ing PVC since it is usually concealed in walls or ceilings. You do need to worry about sound with storm water piping though and we call for that to be insulated.

If you are familiar with university buildings they are generally a different beast than your average commercial or industrial building. They have their own specifications that they follow and cost is not always a priority.

My guess it that it's legit

[dpbsmith]

WARF is old and famous, one of the very first attempts to fund university research by patenting and commercializing research.

It was founded in the 1920s by a professor who invented the process for putting vitamin D in milk.

I believe they also had the patent for homogenizing milk (do you see a pattern here?)

And then, of course, there is WARFarin, the trade name for the anti-coagulation agent dicoumadin, which was discovered when a distressed farmer showed up at the University of Wisconsin's ag school with a bucket of blood from a dead heifer (the pattern continues) and wanted to know what had happened.

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[iknownuttin]

...which was discovered when a distressed farmer showed up at the University of Wisconsin's ag school with a bucket of blood from a dead heifer (the pattern continues) and wanted to know what had happened.

Dude, I mean, come on! Yeah, some farmer's wives are pretty big and obese and it's going to be that way for a while, but to call them heifers?

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see sir, cows need blood to transport oxygen and neutrients around their body. If you take the blood and put it in this bucket, the cow doesn't get the oxygen to the brain it needs and it dies.

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[MightyYar]

So you're saying that they will only license this technology in Gateway computers?

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[Reverend528]

the cow doesn't get the oxygen to the brain

You've never met a cow, have you?

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[AdamTheBastard]

So you might say "they are trying to milk their patents for all they're worth".

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[wik]

It's a cash cow!

Re:My guess it that it's legit

[TeknoHog]

And then, of course, there is WARFarin

a.k.a. forcin' democracy into the developin' countries.

Is this a publicly funded University?

[night_flyer]

then the design belongs to the taxpayers...

Re:Is this a publicly funded University?

[Anonymous Custard]

Pretty much, and that's why WARF is a non-profit, and any profits they get from patents they license are sent right back to the university for more research.

Re:Is this a publicly funded University?

[Dunbal]

Pretty much, and that's why WARF is a non-profit, and any profits they get from patents they license are sent right back to the university for more research.

      The FUN thing about non-profits however is that the people who administer the non-profit ARE entitled to draw a salary for running the thing. After all fair is fair, right?

      if(income > cost){
            salary = income - cost;
            profit = income - (cost + salary);
      }

Re:Is this a publicly funded University?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that you've managed to boil down the subtle intricacies of any and all issues generated from created by professors to a black and white soup of "if it's publicly funded, it belongs to the taxpayers". I'm glad that a nearly century old pioneering organization in the university employing some great legal minds can rest safely knowing that their jobs were only made possible due to the sheer oversight of the aforementioned sentence.

Re:Is this a publicly funded University?

[Anonymous Custard]

The FUN thing about non-profits however is that the people who administer the non-profit ARE entitled to draw a salary for running the thing. After all fair is fair, right? That's why a board of directors controls salaries for the executive employees of the non-profit organization. In principle, they provide oversight and make sure the executives aren't drawing excessive salaries from the organization's revenues. But in practice there's always the chance for corruption or conflict of interest.

Re:Is this a publicly funded University?

[Cheapy]

I believe the purpose of university patents is so that the public doesn't have to pay lots of money for the universities. If they can make some money for themselves, they don't have to have the people pay for them.

Patent troll or not?

[Cracked Pottery]

I don't know. The University of Wisconsin doesn't have the resources to manufacture microprocessors, but does Intel not have the capability of solving the associated problems independently? Are the issues at stake in the patent non-obvious to a highly skilled microprocessor designer? The only thing certain at this point is that some lawyers on both sides are going to enjoy a good payday. I suppose Intel could afford to just pay them off.

Re:Patent troll or not?

[Pojodojo]

I don't think that just because UW doesn't have a manufacturing plant set up means they are not able to hold a patent for microprocessors. There are numerous people at the University, some who I have been instructed by (being a student) whom have held numerous industry positions including microprocessor architects, most of whom have become bored of the industry and gone into research. Which is where these patents come from...

Re:Patent troll or not?

[reebmmm]

Your questions don't t square with the story that's been told so far.

You have a professor who is a well respected in the area of computer architecture disclosing details of this idea to Intel many years before Intel actually started using the technology. You have an institution that attempted to license those rights before Intel started using the technology, but whose attempts were thwarted. That same institution's attempts to negotiate a license were again thwarted less than 5 years after Intel start producing chips with that technology.

And, besides, independent development IS NOT a defense to patent infringement (though it's a defense to copyright infringement). And, even if it were, access to the information would certainly undermine that defense.

It seems the Intel was really just spoiling for a fight.

I happen to work in WARF

[Pojodojo]

I am a student at the University of Wisconsin, and also happen to work in WARF.(we call the building that the foundation is in WARF as well) The Foundation was set up to protect the discoveries of the university, and has paid for itself many times over, as some of the largest medical patents are held by them. There are also an innumerable amount of Stem Cell patents held by them which in the near future will prove to make a large amount of money. Being a Comp Sci student, I also have heard from some of my professors about issues with companies such as IBM and Intel, whom they have been in contact with, and cannot describe to us lowly students the details of their dealings. However they are definitely not patent trolls. I feel this will make things a little more interesting around the University though, to the point where we can see the true purpose of WARF and how it benefits the University. Bring on a new Comp Sci building!!

Re:I happen to work in WARF

[guacamole]

Quite honestly, I hope that someday a law will get passed that bans universities from patenting the products of their research. The idea that the universities use mostly public money or private donations for their research and then patent results and sell them to businesses who essentially create mini-monopolies based on those patents is simply outrageous (remember RSA?). We fund the universities so that they would create and share new knowledge for the public good. Patenting the products of university research seems at odds with this goal. I just can't believe that universities these days have gone so low as to insist on patenting their discoveries. If they're thinking of using their discoveries for profit, maybe they also should use the proceeds to fund their research as well without taxpayer money?

Re:I happen to work in WARF

[reebmmm]

Quite honestly, I hope that someday a law will get passed that bans universities from patenting the products of their research.

Except for the fact that current federal law actually makes it a point to force universities to get patent protection or lose those rights to the federal government. It's called Bayh-Dole.

And contrary to your assertions, the whole point is that by giving the universities the right to acquire title to the invention and then imposing commercialization obligations upon them means more of the inventions actually will get to market. Now its true, it some cases this probably doesn't work, for example, a blockbuster technology that everyone would adopt. But that's not most technology. Indeed, doing something that everyone else can do is not usually very profitable.

The reason the patent is a good tool for this is actually a result of the market. Most companies want patent protection because it gives them an advantage in the marketplace. So by allowing universities to patent those inventions, they have a tool to license the technology in order to commercialize it--basically giving the licensing company an extra incentive to actually exploit the technology.

As a significant note, you can read about how infrequently technology was commercialized prior to Bayh-Dole. The numbers are quite staggering. Most "inventions" were never licensed. The federal government retained title to all of its funded inventions, and very little commercialization was done.

Re:I happen to work in WARF

[DRJlaw]

In that case, it's unfortunate for you that the U.S. government passed a law that encouraged universities to patent the products of their research.

Imagine the gall. A university conducts research that results a useful, novel, and hopefully non-obvious technology, and they have the nerve to patent that technology. Then they have the nerve to ask for licensing revenue, and use the revenue to fund the university so that it can educate more students, and conduct more research, and maintain its facilities. Of course, the university should give the research product away for free, because you're perfectly willing to pay higher tuition and higher taxes to make up for this revenue that makes the university marginally more self-supporting. Aren't you?

If they're thinking of using their discoveries for profit, maybe they also should use the proceeds to fund their research as well without taxpayer money?

Because the money goes... where? And it's an all-or-nothing proposition, eh? You appear to have neglected to think this all the way through.

Re:I happen to work in WARF

[Lost Engineer]

If they're thinking of using their discoveries for profit, maybe they also should use the proceeds to fund their research as well without taxpayer money? Very few Universities are even allowed to make a profit, much less do. Any revenues from IP go right back into the University, which ultimately saves public money. I disagree with the insinuation that schools are hoarding knowledge by using patents. In fact they are making the knowledge readily available to anyone with a computer. However, if you want to make use of that knowledge withing 20 years, you have to pay. It's sort of like retroactively buying into the public investment that made the knowledge available.

Re:I happen to work in WARF

[whovian]

Well, call it a guess, but since it's called Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, I believe that the fundage for the patentable research is coming from the alumni's private money.

Besides, if you want to take issue with a company getting "free" patents with taxpayer money, take a look at the government national laboratories. Los Alamos alone boasts over 1300 patents. I'm not aware of any of the national labs suing businesses, however.

Re:Another good example...

[PopeRatzo]

Patents (copyright, trademarks, etc) are not bad, they give credit where credit is due...

So you think the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association or "WARF" or whatever it's called actually came up with this invention? Or maybe was it some grad students at the UofW who did all the work and got zilch for their trouble?

As long as patents, copyrights, etc. can be bought and sold, they are NOT about "credit where credit is due".

Not first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel did the same thing back when they were developing Pentium. Intel reviewed the architecture and design of DEC's Alpha chip which they decided not to license it eventually. Later on, Intel surprised industry with huge performance gain from 486 to Pentium chip. One of the executives of Intel mentioned that they used features from mainframe to improve the performance of Pentium. The comment sounded fishy to DEC and when they looked at Pentium, and they found out that Intel copied some of the design from Alpha chip. DEC sued Intel and they settled outside of court.

Now that you mention it...

[penix1]

I am against universities holding patents period. How much of that patent was obtained using public funds? How much should go back to the public when the settlement comes in? How much of their licensing fees they gain from other patents are returned to the public from which it came?

Universities have seen the patent system as the cash cow it is and haven't thought this through.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[pembo13]

To be fair, I think universities should be granted patents, if only to look good on walls and recognize commitments. But they should be made publicly available if the university benefits from public funds. Especially in this case, where the idea seems novel, and non obvious.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[duplicate-nickname]

How much is returned to the public? WARF has put almost $1 billion back into research at the University ($50 million last year) and supported 1500 seperate research projects last year. Not to mention that there are 1000's of people employeed around the state in the private sector at small biotech companies and other firms developing products off of WARF licensed technologies.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Mister Whirly]

I work at a university and from what I understand most of the patents/patent research is not done with public money - most research money is private. At least in my department and related departments. Actually about 90% of our department's entire funding is from private research money.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Ced_Ex]

How much is returned to the public? WARF has put almost $1 billion back into research at the University ($50 million last year) and supported 1500 seperate research projects last year. Not to mention that there are 1000's of people employeed around the state in the private sector at small biotech companies and other firms developing products off of WARF licensed technologies. Though, my question is, of those 1500 research projects, how many of them came to a new radical conclusion, or provided information that is useful?

When I was doing research, I remember only a very small percentage of research actually provided something useful. Most research proved nothing, or just confirmed what we already knew. This research however was in medical sciences, so I'm not sure exactly how much can translate to engineering type research, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[reebmmm]

First, federal law requires that inventions made with federal funds must either be commercialized by the inventing institution or given up to the government (the gov't can then decide not to take title and title reverts to the inventor). It's called Bayh-Dole. Allowing title to revert to the government or the inventor is not particularly good results. Well funded tech transfer offices are much better at getting technology to licensees than either the federal government or the inventor. Besides, the federal government gets a royalty-free license to use the technology for its own purposes, a nice benefit to the US government.

Second, in this case, WARF actually contributes significantly to both the University of Wisconsin Madison (a state school) and to the inventors, inventing laboratory and inventing department. You can read about the process here: http://warf.ws/inventors/index.jsp?cid=14&scid=40

Third, WARF has been at this for a very long time. They're a very sophisticated patenting and licensing entity. They have definitely thought this through. According to their website, they are also not in the business of patenting every idea that every professor discloses to them (they say 60% of disclosures, but who knows).

Furthermore, they're a great asset to those inventors without the means to pursue licensing and patent protection on their own. Inventors pay nothing up front for what is otherwise a very expensive, time consuming ordeal.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[ShieldW0lf]

That means your university has been corrupted to the point that you can't even recognize that it was once intended to be a public institution. It has been so polluted with private money, and has so normalized its operations to depend on that private money, that it is unfit to serve the purpose for which it was created. It's just a means of generating more scarcity and leverage now.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[UnknownSoldier]

Actually, I see this as a good thing. "What is good for the goose is good for the gander."

Maybe if enough companies get stung (can't compete) by the limitations of the insane patent laws, then they will be more compelled to remove them.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Mister Whirly]

Or it means the university doesn't want to listen to people bitch about spending public money on things they don't support. Yeah, the university that is self-sufficient on private funds instead of wasting public money is certainly "corrupted". The purpose of the university is education and companies funding research privately is providing just that. Research money is soley used for, wait for it - research. The university is not "dependent" on this money for normal operation. If they don't get private research money, they don't do the research. It's not like they spend the university operating budget on research. If there is no research money, there is no research.
I think your tinfoil hat is a little tight today...

Re:Now that you mention it...

[realthing02]

That's like, your opinion, man.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[DrDitto]

The problem is that computer architecture research funding is drying up. DARPA no long funds it. NSF funding is there, but sparse. Intel makes lots of money off of university innovations and they could help out a little more.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Noren]

Well, there was a research project they funded in the area of parallel computing back in 1998 that provided Intel with some useful information, and led to more efficient parallel computers. I think I read an article about that somewhere, but you might not have heard of it.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[odourpreventer]

Much research rely on private funding and venture capitalism. Even if an institute resides on University grounds that doesn't mean that it funds the research going on there. Institutes take the money where they can get it. An institute I worked at received large donations from IBM in exchange for research data.

There's just not enough public funding to go around. If you'd worked at a University, you would know this. In no way does this mean that the University has become "corrupted".

Re:Now that you mention it...

[ShieldW0lf]

Much research rely on private funding and venture capitalism. Even if an institute resides on University grounds that doesn't mean that it funds the research going on there. Institutes take the money where they can get it. An institute I worked at received large donations from IBM in exchange for research data. There's just not enough public funding to go around. If you'd worked at a University, you would know this. In no way does this mean that the University has become "corrupted".

It means that the society has become corrupted. Universities are institutions that were created to serve higher purposes for society and not serve the profit motive. The profit motive doesn't need a university, because it serves itself.

There are no universities that run on public funding, because there isn't enough public funding, because it's all privately controlled, because the society is hopelessly corrupt and has to be rebuilt from zero, just like after the fall of the Roman Empire.

I wouldn't work at a university. I wouldn't go to one either. I think they're degrading and make you both blind and stupid, frankly. No one ever developed problem solving skills and perceptive eyes by sitting at the seat of an authority figure like a child. You just end up with inherited blind spots and a disconnectedness from the means by which your livelihood is assured.

The education system is just another system of control, a way to turn people into pets. University graduates do the cutest tricks, but they can't take care of themselves without an owner.

You can keep it.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Gibbs-Duhem]

I know that at my university, and it seemed many similar universities, a huge draw for getting the best and brightest individuals around into the doctoral program is that if you invent something, you can actually make money on it. For instance, at MIT, one third of the proceeds of any patents go directly to the inventors, one third goes to fund the lab that they work in, and one third goes to MIT. This makes it massively more attractive for inventors such as myself to come here. It is true that my work is funded in part by the government, but the amount I am being paid is a pittance compared to the value I am creating here. The only reason it makes sense for me to do my research in an open, academic setting is because when I'm done, I can go and commercialize what I invent and make a living out of it.

I know that the same is true for many professors. How could a university reasonably convince an amazing professor and technologist to work there if they force the professor to give up all rights to anything they create to the public domain? No one in academia makes nearly enough money to justify removing their ability to capitalize on inventions they develop.

Beyond the need to attract top-tier students and faculty, universities being able to make money from inventions means that less public money goes to fund the research that goes on there. Instead, companies who benefit from that research are forced, through patent licensing, to fund the universities. It makes a lot of sense -- if a university does amazing mechanical engineering work, it makes sense that companies that want to capitalize on that work subsidize it instead of being able to use it and put the burden of funding that research more heavily on the public as a whole.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[moderatorrater]

I think universities should be granted patents...Especially in this case, where the idea seems novel, and non obvious. So, by definition, whenever a patent should be granted?

Re:Now that you mention it...

[mikael]

In medical research, the ultimate goal for any treatment is to treat the patient as quickly as possible with fewer side effects. In a perfect Star-Trek world, it shouldn't be anything more trickier than scanning a tricorder over someone's injuries.

In computer science research, you are looking for the most efficient algorithm that can solve a given problem in the least amount of time, using the least amount of computational resources (storage). Obviously, there is a trade off between these two.

In chemistry, it seems to be able to achieve a given chemical process using the least amount of energy, resources, catalysts in the least amount of time.

If you can find a solution to one of these problems, then you can capitalize on the results of that research and set up your own company. "Sensors-on-a-chip" for biology is an example field. Given that there are around 30,000 genes in human DNA, there is vast market to be explored, not counting virology, bacteriology and genomics.

And even if the research doesn't find anything new, you can use the lateral experience gained (eg. applications development) to set yourself up as a consultant in that field.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Markspark]

hear hear!

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Daengbo]

Patents developed by public agencies (or those receiving public funds to do the research) should be licensed to that public at no cost. In this case, if UW receives state funding (obvious), then Wisconsin residents should get license for free. If UW receives federal funding for this department, all U.S. employees should receive the license. I have similar views on publicly-developed works of art including software and the public domain.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[scottv67]

I wouldn't work at a university. I wouldn't go to one either.

Heyyyyyy, that's great. I can totally see your point. Would it be okay if you didn't bang the trash cans against the side of your truck when you empty them? The noise wakes-up my wife early on trash day and that makes her cranky. I promise to do a better job bundling my newspapers in the future. Did you notice that we rinse-out the soup cans before we put them in the recycle bin? You take care now...

Re:Now that you mention it...

[vic-traill]

But they should be made publicly available if the university benefits from public funds

Not trolling, but definitely playing Devil's Advocate here: so what if a university benefits from public funds? Don't many privately held corporations benefit from public funds (from infrastructure - roads - to services, to selling product that is paid for in 'public funds')?

My point is that the idea of 'benefiting from public funds' is a slippery one, and that segmenting patent applicability by some measure of the use of public funds in developing a patent is a complex issue.

And I'm not expressing support for the current state of the USPTO here, nor the general state of the patent system in the U.S. at this time - just questioning a particular idea expressed above.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[mabhatter654]

I agree, the purpose of university is to train students to WORK at these companies, not to be cheap research. Public university should be for everybody, and those who do the work should get all the credit for it.. that's capitalism isn't it? I understand it's to "help" students, but why don't the companies just donate money to fund something? Why is it "paid for" under IP contracts?

My point is that the work the students do is worth 10x what the "donations" are worth. And the students are deprived of taking their work anywhere else after being presented the "ideas". Therefore the university has shirked it's duty to STUDENTS first to provide them tools to be productive and INDEPENDENT.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[ShieldW0lf]

Yeah, right. I mentor university graduates as a matter of course and write infrastructure that brings food and medicine to billions of people. But you just keep looking down your nose anyways. Maybe you'll find your pecker someday.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[fyrewulff]

There are no universities that run on public funding University of Nebraska says "hi".

Re:Now that you mention it...

[amorsen]

It's not like they spend the university operating budget on research. I should hope that they do spend the university operating budget on research. Otherwise, why do we have universities? Shut them down and turn them into trade schools. But maybe this already happened, and they just forgot to change the names.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[eggnoglatte]

Every so often I stumble across a post on slashdot that is so bizarre that I have to wonder what planet the poster is living on. The parent is one of those cases.

I have a faculty position at a public university, and believe me: you do NOT want to pay the taxes you'd have to pay if all my research activities (and those of my colleagues) were publically funded. So it is either private funds or reduced research activities. Guess which one is better for society?

There is a role for both public and private funding in university research. Public funding is great for high uncertainty research and everything with a horizon of 10+ years. This type of research is absolutely necessary to push the edge in science and technology, but is expected that only a small percentage of such research will ever be successful of commercially viable. Once you have discovered a basic phenomenon that seems to have promising applications, now is the time to extract the most societal benefit from that work. How do you do that? In some cases (e.g. medical research) the societal benefit is direct. In most science and technology areas, the societal benefit is indirect, through the creation of jobs. That means there has to be a path for taking the basic science and using it in products down the line. Note that at this stage, there is typically still quite a bit of work to be done to make the technology product ready. Who should pay for that work? The government? I think not! So this is the time for industry to step up and invest significant amounts of money (often more than required to do the initial basic research!). Of course they'll only do that if they can be reasonably sure their investments are protected, hence you need patents.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[Mister Whirly]

Lighten up Francis.

Yes...

[Colin Smith]

By that definition, the 101 sexual positions in the Kama Sutra are inventions, and thereby patentable...

Re:Yes...

[Killjoy_NL]

Only a 101? Amateurs, I should write a book then with every possible position then ;)

Re:Yes...

[Surt]

There would have been prior art for those. However, had any of the ideas been novel at the time, then sure, allow a patent.

Re:Another good example...

[Vectronic]

Even if you sell a Copyright, the original creator, still has Moral Rights...

"Moral Rights" consist of "I Mr. Whoever Made This" aswell as the ability to object to the use of the "Object" the caopyright protects.

Therefore, its credit where credit is due... it just doesnt apply to "credit" as in "the intention to pay" money.

So Intel uses Klingon technology

[gatkinso]

I always suspected modern computers were well beyond the ability of human invention.

Re:So Intel uses Klingon technology

[samwichse]

I hate this new moderation system. One slip and you can accidentally mod someone down.

Important point

[spun]

I hope you get modded up, this is a very important point to note. Established researchers in the field, presented their work at Intel, definitely sounds like there is some merit to the claim.

Re:Important point

[geekoid]

Clearly Intel disagrees.

Intel is also full of Smart people established in their field.

Plus, argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

Re:Important point

[spun]

What argument from authority? I don't think you understand that fallacy. Argument from authority is when you say, "X, an expert says Y. Therefore, Y is true," I was saying these guys are experts, therefore, they are more likely to have invented something non obvious. The fact that they presented their inventions to Intel means that Intel had the opportunity to use their discoveries. Neither I, nor the post I was responding to makes any definite claims. That post was making inferences about the likelihood of this case having any merit, and I agreed that his points support the possibility of wrongdoing on Intel's part. Are you honestly disagreeing with that assessment?

The great $$$ redistribution

[klaiber]

So the public at large funds universities so those can do research, which they then patent so that it costs the public more money to use the patents than had they been public domain.

Personally, I believe that there are two reasonable options:
(a) any research funded by public monies ought to be in the public domain, at least in the country of origin; or
(b) any proceeds from patent license fees (or lawsuits) ought to go back to the public purse, not directly into the university's pocket.

Plus, the public or its trusted (hah) representatives ought to have a say, for a given patent, whether to pursue (a) or (b); that way inventions (e.g., in the area of health care) that are really beneficial to the public can follow path (a) and encourage quick and widespread adoption.

Table Based

[Tablizer]

Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer.

Damn, they patented relational. I'm fucked. -Tablizer-

Re:Another good example...

[reebmmm]

You very obviously do not know how tech transfer offices work. In this case, the money from licensing technology assigned to WARF is divided up among 1) the inventors 2) the lab the invention came out of 3) the department and 4) to WARF.

A quick view of the WARF website has a whole page on the royalty distribution: http://warf.ws/inventors/index.jsp?cid=14&scid=40

Of significant note:

The inventors receive 20 percent of the gross royalty revenue generated by a licensed invention. Payments are made to the inventors in the month following the receipt of the royalty payment.

You could at least get your complaints right.

[ot] comic-store-guy says:

[wild_berry]

With every due respect this shouldn't be 'funny'. This is a geek site, and we have standards to uphold: *Worf* is the son of *Mogh*.

Re:[ot] comic-store-guy says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but I don't think anyone would call him that, since the House of Mogh has been dissolved. Probably something more like "Worf, of the House of Martok."

Re:Another good example...

[Pojodojo]

You should really do more research before you start making accusations.

WARF was established because the researchers don't have time to mess with patent lawyers and royalty issues. The "Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation" (WARF) has the sole purpose of filing and protecting the discoveries of the Universities Faculty and Students. They inventors receive compensation from WARF for their discoveries, however in academia, it is more important to have your name recognized with the discovery than to get tons of money from it. Most of the money goes back into research, which is why the University of Wisconsin consistently ranks highly in the top Research Institutions of the World.

Happened to Sony and IBM also

[dontthink]

IBM (http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=2201) and Sony (http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5097776.html) have also faced the wrath of WARF. Both were settled out of court for a pretty significant chunk of change. Luckily, most of that money goes back to University research and the inventors...

Re:Happened to Sony and IBM also

[earlymon]

Luckily, most of that money goes back to University research and the inventors... I was ok or had mixed feelings (tending to ok) on the whole issue of universities owning patents and being afforded all rights thereto, until I read your comment.

Now, the hair on the back of my neck is up.

Is it just me, or isn't it true that virtually all out-of-court settlements are kept private?

I do not live in a world where I trust any university to receive sums from corporations with totals to be kept secrect, and be confident of where the money went.

Hail, hail our alma maters and all that - but I bet dollars to doughnuts that anyone with blind trust because it's a university are in line to find out why we force public accountability - we have to.

I know a lot of accountants. If asked, I'm sure that they could change the books around and make it look like football is paying for research and research is paying for basketball.

Most of the money of goes back to research? You don't know that. You don't know really how much is involved. Your trusting what people behind closed doors have come out and told you.

Please - tell me I'm wrong. Don't research it and then tell me - tell me you _knew_ when you wrote it. Because if you didn't, you're indicating that the situation already exists where the public - sample size you - is already accepting assumption as fact where public monies are involved.

If I'm hard on you for this, apologies. But put what you say together with what a previous poster said, to the effect that private money is going to research, but public money is going elsewhere - then re-read this.

Please - tell me I'm wrong, because I want to be. But my gut tells me that I'm not.

Re:Happened to Sony and IBM also

[dontthink]

I've submitted a patent with WARF (ultimately declined), so I'm familiar with the institution. I know a number of researchers who hold patents through WARF, and I've really heard nothing but good things. I know you asked me not to do research, but I knew the following when I originally posted from my dealing with them, and just looked up the reference for legitimacy.

From http://www.warf.org/inventors/index.jsp?cid=7

Inventors' Share
The inventors receive 20 percent of the gross royalty revenue generated by a licensed invention.

After deducting this portion, a certain percentage goes to their operating costs - I'm sure keeping a number of patent lawyers around isn't cheap. The good thing is that 20% is BEFORE those costs. The rest goes into a grant given to the university, distributed as such.

Laboratory Share of the Annual Grant
Of the first $100,000 generated by each license agreement, the inventors' laboratories receive a grant equaling 70 percent of the gross royalties. For example, if an agreement generated $50,000 in royalty revenue over its lifetime, the inventors' laboratories would receive 70 percent of $50,000, or $35,000.

Graduate School Share
After the laboratory and department shares have been allocated, the remainder of WARF's annual grant is given to the UW-Madison Graduate School. The Graduate School uses this money to support a variety of projects and programs each year, including:

        * The Graduate School Research Competition
        * The Romnes Early Career Awards and the Kellett Mid-Career Awards
        * Named professorships and graduate fellowships
        * Campus building projects

Whether or not shady accounting occurs in these settlements and grants I have no idea, but I have no reason to believe so. As I said before, everyone I know who holds a patent through WARF has been quite happy with the arrangement.

At UW, if no federal funding was involved, the intellectual property generated from research is the researcher's (unless there were strings attached to the private funding) - they don't HAVE to deal with WARF at all. I know this for a fact from my dealings with them - my collegues and I chose to work with them because the benefits of going through WARF FAR outweighed the the cons.

Sure, most settlements are confidential to the public, but not to the patent holder (who would include the inventor/researcher along with WARF).

From your post:

Most of the money of goes back to research? You don't know that.

I appreciate your skepticism, and can understand where you're coming from except for this comment - you have no clue what I do or do not know - don't pretend you do for dramatic effect. I did my research on WARF when my personal interests were on the line, and from what I was able to discern it's a GOOD deal for the researchers/inventors, the University, and the student body.

Re:Happened to Sony and IBM also

[earlymon]

Thanks for the info. The criticism that I was pretending for dramatic effect holds no water. You seem to know the ins and outs have researched it.

I submitted that trusting an accounting isn't the same as knowing you can.

If I was wrong, then I wrong - but dramatic, I wasn't. I know what I don't know - and knew it when I posted it. If all you read was dramatic effect, then my point stands - and so does yours, but maybe not in the way you'd like.

Re:Happened to Sony and IBM also

[dontthink]

I do understand your point - I don't disagree that such organizations, attached to a public university, should have public accountability regarding their finances (I haven't done much digging on what's publicly available on WARF).

Your argument RE: accountants holds true for any arrangement where large sums of money are negotiated and transferred behind closed doors. But from my experience, WARF is on the up and up in this regard.

My comments regarding dramatic effect generally reflect my indignation regarding slashdotters who make assumptions about posters (myself) based on a 2-sentence post. I've run into it before, but in you're case I can see how you meant to emphasize your point rather than accuse me of ignorance. No hard feelings - I probably wouldn't have put all that effort into my reply without the indignation, FWIW :)

Re:Happened to Sony and IBM also

[earlymon]

No hard feelings.

Know _exactly_ what you mean about frustration being the mother of effort - for myself, I don't know whether to like that about myself or not. A lot of what I end up proving and doing in life are because some ignoramus told me I couldn't do it because others couldn't or was wrong when I knew I was right. Like it or not about myself, I don't change - don't plan to.

Maybe it's a sign of an inventor. :)

Cheers

Funding sources and patents

[kwahoo]

Funding source is highly dependent on field. In CS and ECE, the majority, probably the vast majority, comes from the NSF, DoD, and DOE.

It may seem that research funded with public money should provide the technology for the greater good, but the Bayh-Dole Act allows U's to get patents. Regardless of whether you like this or not, one point in its favor is that it prevents a company from effectively "stealing" such ideas by getting their own patents on all the conceivable extensions of the university's research.

Beam me up

[OMNIpotusCOM]

I'm really impressed that it took this long into the comments to get a pseudo-Star Trek joke. Give yourselves some Romulan Ale.

Re:Another good example...

[Iron Condor]

Patents (copyright, trademarks, etc) are not bad, they give credit where credit is due...

its most (but not all) of the laws surrounding patents and copyrights, that are bad.

Patents are bad because their only effect is funneling resources from the fast, high-powered, creative, dynamic people in the world to the retarded lazy dullards who think thy only ever have to do one single clever thing in their entire life and should get paid for it from here on in perpetuity.

To the creative people amongst us, who create new things, new processes, new ideas, new concepts, new knowledge, new value on a daily basis, Imaginary Property merely gets in the way. It hampers me daily in my attempts to innovate -- and the only benefit is some lazy geezers financing their retirement through milking the one smart thing they did in their lives back in the fifties.

Contrary to the assertions of folks like you, removing the ability to retire the very first time you've done something smart would actually result is a dramatic net increase in overall productivity, because people would have to continue doing smart things to continue getting paid.

When someone digs a ditch for me, he gets paid. Once. That's it. If I had to continue paying him in all eternity for the ditch he dug, he'd never contribute anything anywhere ever again[*]. And the same is true for "patent (copyright etc) holders": You do something good, you deserve to get paid for your work. Once. Now. How much depends on the deal you struck. You do emphatically NOT deserve to somehow "retain rights" to the thing you created and somehow expect to get paid for it for years and years in the future.

If you want to get paid next year, you should have to do some actual work next year. Whether you're digging ditches or developing processor designs. I do it. Many others do it. And it is time we stopped the parasitic maggots who think they're too good for work next year because they already worked once ten years ago.

--

[*]And I wouldn't even be allowed to say "screw this, I'm digging my own ditches from now on" because he'd be holding some kind of "intellectual property rights" on the process of digging of ditches.

Re:Now that you mention it... .. Well, then...

[davidsyes]

Intel won't be "ass-ailed" for misusing public caughers, but it might be publicly assailed for abusing private patents...Wait...This might prove to be QUITE a "blast from the past" upon Intel?

Core-specific?

[Chris Snook]

I skimmed the complaint, and was reminded of some bragging Intel did about improved dependency disambiguation in the Core microarchitecture that allowed them to expand from 3 pipelines to 4 pipelines and shorten the pipelines substantially, which gave a major performance boost over the Netburst microarchitecture. That could explain why this is going to court only now. The discussion probably didn't become adversarial until Intel started selling allegedly-infringing processors to the public, even though they were working on such designs in 2001.

WARF vs Intel lawyers.....

[Lost Penguin]

"WARF contacted Intel in 2001, and made repeated attempts, including meeting face-to-face with company representatives"

He should have brought his betleH

Intel lawyers are bada$$

[Radical Moderate]

I was having breakfast in a Portland hotel once and a couple Intel patent lawyers settled into the next booth with a couple from a rival chipmaker--maybe AMD, who knows? Halfway through breakfast the f-yous started flying and one of the Intel guys was trying to get one of the opposition to step outside for some fisticuffs. And the Intel guy had be pushing 70!

I hope the Wisconsin boys know what they're getting into.

If a university can hold a patent...

[gatkinso]

...then I want my taxes (not to mention tuition) back.

Or atleast the part of my taxes that went to the university (in my case Maryland and Hopkins).

Re:If a university can hold a patent...

[ChrisMaple]

...then I want my taxes (not to mention tuition) back.

The university would want the education back, but you didn't get what you paid for.

Re:If a university can hold a patent...

[gatkinso]

You are correct in one regard, wrong in another. The degrees are worthwhile, the education is laughable. At work I wrote software that sent telemetry from ABM interceptor to ground range systems. I would then go to class to learn things like "Fundementals of Object Oriented Programming" and write Hello World in Smalltalk. But I digress.

Yet schools make tons of money from their patents - tuition increases anyway 15% a year. Oh well - it is all a racket anyway so I guess it doesn't matter.

Re:Another good example...

[reebmmm]

...Imaginary Property merely gets in the way. It hampers me daily...

So you mean that patents are working?

In all seriousness though, you're hardly "innovating" in any sense of the word if you're doing things that have been described by someone else in a patent filed so long ago that it's issued. That's just about the craziest reasoning I've seen on slashdot.

But more to your original point, the idea of patents is to prevent "parasitic maggots" that capitalize, copy, and lazily "innovate" using someone else's effort. So, rather than the patent being parasitic, the system that you advocate for actually promotes and fosters laziness all the while minimizing the reward to the originator.

And, there is no system of patents that guarantees payment in perpetuity. Once you consider the fact that it takes years to get through the patent office, in many fields the lifetime of a patent is relatively short in business terms. **

Now, I'm not going to defend EVERY patent out there. Hell, I've seen my fair share that are incomprehensible and/or entirely obvious (both in the legal and technical sense). This does not seem to be the case here--at least not yet.

I'll probably get modded down as a troll and blow what karma I do have since you voice a very popular opinion. But, I'll do it anyway.

[** Copyright, on the other hand, does come much closer. When you're discussing about protecting anything at the "author's life+" then you're talking about a long time relative to any particular individual.]

Filing in E.D. Texas is Infringement 101

[Infonaut]

Filed by a lawyer in Marshall, Texas means troll for sure though.

It means the lawyer is of average or better intelligence. The Eastern District of Texas has swiftly built a reputation for being friendly to patent holders. It also has a rep for getting a large number of patent decisions overturned on appeal. But if you're a patent holder and you want the best chance of winning, you angle for E.D. Texas.

If you held a patent, would you *not* try to file in a district that is generally favorable to patent holders? It has nothing to do with troll/non-troll status. Nobody files a patent suit to waste money. If you file, you want to win or get the claimed infringer to settle.

Re:Another good example...

[Vectronic]

If I could mod you up I would...

Its basically the same reason why someone with a troubled life often makes the best art... "constraint creates innovation"

Re:Another good example...

[bunratty]

Patents are bad because their only effect is funneling resources from the fast, high-powered, creative, dynamic people in the world to the retarded lazy dullards who think thy only ever have to do one single clever thing in their entire life and should get paid for it from here on in perpetuity.

Could you give even one example of such a retarded lazy dullard? Most people and companies I've heard that hold patents keep on working and making new discoveries.

Re:Another good example...

[TekPolitik]

the idea of patents is to prevent "parasitic maggots" that capitalize, copy, and lazily "innovate" using someone else's effort

That has precisely nothing to do with the role of patents. If that were the idea behind patents, then independent invention would be an absolute defence. The fact is that once there is a patent it doesn't matter if a million other people independently invent the thing, they are all subject to the burden of the patent.

Patents are, in theory, about promoting the useful arts. The idea is that patents provide incentive to people to produce new techniques so that they are produced much earlier than they otherwise would have been. In principle "much earlier" should have some favourable correlation to the lifetime of a patent.

Unfortunately, this is frequently not what patents do.

Technological development is like a wave breaking towards a beach. There's a whole front of development involving a whole lot of people. The vast majority of the time, the next development is inevitable, and many, many people will cross a particular piece of ground as part of the unstoppable march towards the final goal. Patents encourage those crossing this common ground to stake a claim that amounts to a trap against those crossing this same ground as they inevitably will. More knowledgable participants recognise what is happening, and more ethical participants recognise that even though the law might allow them to stake a claim to the area that everybody is being driven towards, it is wrong to do so just because you happen to stake the claim before anybody else does.

True breakthroughs, before-time development of future technologies, are extraordinarily rare - the sheer number of patents in existence is more than sufficient evidence that there is something wrong with the system and that the pool of truly legitimate patents is a mere drop in the ocean of patents in existence.

There is no doubt in my mind on this point. Patents do more damage than good. We should be fostering a free market for new technologies, not imposing artificial monopolies that stifle technological progress.

Not the first time

[mwarps]

This is not the first time that Intel has ripped off a patent and just settled later.

The last time was Amberwave (they invented the methodology for building the wafers that Intel uses to make their chips) feel free to google "intel amberwave", the first hit is Intel news on the settlement.

Patents

[EmotionToilet]

Uhh... this is America. Patents last practically forever. Or at least the length of your lifetime, which is really all you need. Unless you're a pharmaceutical company. Then they only last maybe 10 years or so. But yeah, patents in America last throughout your entire life, and go on to benefit your children too, and maybe even their children. I think it's obnoxious and hinders fair competition and educational material.

Re:Another good example...

[reebmmm]

That has precisely nothing to do with the role of patents.

Not quite right, depending on how you look at it. Patents require disclosure and the law presumes that once there's disclosure it's available for other to use. The purpose of the patent right is precisely to encourage that disclosure while briefly permitting the disclosing party ability to exclude others from practicing the patented invention. In this sense, it does prevent others from capitalizing on another's inventions.

You are right, though, that the patent is meant to create an incentive in order to promote the useful arts. That incentive has everything to do with the ability to prevent a second-comer from capitalizing on the effort of another person.

If that were the idea behind patents, then independent invention would be an absolute defence.

There's not a defense of independent invention for many different reasons. One would be to encourage faster disclosure. If independent invention were really a defense there would be absolutely no reason to disclose. So no, you're wrong about this.

Patents encourage those crossing this common ground to stake a claim that amounts to a trap against those crossing this same ground as they inevitably will.

I will not dispute that patents are granted for trivial changes, but this is a line drawing problem. One that courts, commentators and lawyers struggle with all of the time. The question though is who should bear the burden for showing that this is trivial? In an ideal world, the adversarial process of patent examination would suffice. However, there's not enough time or money in the USPTO to give a perfect examination to every application.

We should be fostering a free market for new technologies, not imposing artificial monopolies that stifle technological progress.

No offense, but this is just gibberish. Among other things, most patents do not create monopolies. In the most basic sense, a monopoly requires many buyers and only one seller. There are almost no patents that can successfully exclude all others in a field. Furthermore, contrary to what people think, enforcing patents is an expensive, time consuming proposition.

Few patent owners ever litigate or ever commercialize their patents. It's called a patent lottery for a reason.

Re:Another good example...

[kesuki]

yes, and given the patent number... a quick google patent search shows up that they got their patent in 1996.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=q5AbAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,781,752

i remember 1996, very clearly, since it was the year i graduated high school. i was using a 486 33 hmz computer and had to use a wierd telnet dial-up thing to connect to the the college campus computers. It was the year i graduated high school, but i was in all college courses, it was a state program where highly academic students could get their state school funding applied to the first year or two of college.

the pentium might have been out in 96 or so, but i didn't get my first pentium system until 1997. so, frankly intel is in BIG trouble for trying to avoid paying royalties to warf. I'm fairly sure that amd paid up, for their X2s there is no reason why intel shouldn't be doing the same, since most of this money goes to support the college systems ability to do purely theoretical research long before technology is ready for mainstream.

prior art? i don't think there was even any mainframe groups working on multi-core processors in '96 so i doubt this patent will be tossed aside.

Re:Another good example...

[greenbird]

In all seriousness though, you're hardly "innovating" in any sense of the word if you're doing things that have been described by someone else in a patent filed so long ago that it's issued. That's just about the craziest reasoning I've seen on slashdot.

So by your definition something is innovative only if it is 100% completely in all aspects new and no part of it has ever been tried before. In the world I live in innovation often, I dare say most often, involves small changes made over a period time by a number of people. The patent system would work in your world's type of innovation but in my world it means everyone one of people who make each of those little changes files a patent and suddenly innovation becomes financially impossible because you have to pay some of your money to each and every person who patented their little change.

And, there is no system of patents that guarantees payment in perpetuity. Once you consider the fact that it takes years to get through the patent office, in many fields the lifetime of a patent is relatively short in business terms.

Are you kidding. In the tech world 17 years is more than forever. Think about the state of word possessors in 1991 or hardware. You're talking about a 1000's of incremental changes since then. If someone had patented each one of those changes we still be using that old split screen word perfect crap.

Re:Another good example...

[Iron Condor]

Imagine there's a task. Call it a XYZ task. And someone who has to perform it a lot says something like "this would be so much easier if there was an XYZ gadget that would kinda work like this and work by that principle -- that wouldn't be hard to produce. Why doesn't anybody make such a thing?" And that person looks it up on the web and indeed, such a gadget cannot be bought anywhere.

Situation 1: how things should work:

Person goes and starts manufactuing the XYZ-gadget. It's not like he wants to make a lot of money off it -- heck, it's OK if it merely breaks even. All he wants is an XYZ gadget available to him. But if there's a market, others could now try to make better XYZ gadgets. Modified XYZ gadgets. Designs the original inventor never even thought of. Applications he never even had in mind. Turns out that people in some completely different industry start modifying XYZ gadgets for their own purpose and soon a whole industry of modified XYZ gadgets springs up, with designer colors and actual research performed into the optimum way of making ABC gadgets (which were a clever derivative of the original XYZ gadget and sell much better because they can frobnicate as well as gadgerize). That's innovarion.

Situation 2: how things really work:

Turns out the notion of the XYZ gadget is obvious enough to practicioners in the field that there have been a dozen attempts to make and sell them before. But every time someone tries that, JoeDude steps out of the woodwork. JoeDude had one clever idea back in the seventies and so he got a patent. And he'll be happy to sell you the idea for a million bucks. Of course the world market for XYZ-gadgets is only $500,000 so nobody is willing to shell out that kind of money -- and JoeDude has found that he can actually make decent money by suing would-be manufacturers of XYZ-gadgets into nonexistence unless they settle with him for some sizable amount. The gadget never gets produced. XYZ-practicioners keep on having to frobnicate manually one-by-one. That's no innovation.

In all seriousness though, you're hardly "innovating" in any sense of the word if you're doing things that have been described by someone else in a patent filed so long ago that it's issued.

Spoken like someone who's never had a single creative idea in his life. Who's never actually developed any new technology, made a new gadget, produced some original data.

And since you're just armchair-analyzing, you fantasize that the situation described above is some kind of rare edge-case. It isn't. It is the rule. I, personally, have at least one good marketable idea per week. A system, gadget, product for which I, myself, would gladly pay as much money as I think I could produce the product at. So does everybody around me. Because we're creative people who actually contribute usefully to society.

But in my industry (aerospace) innovation has been patented out of existence. The Boeings and Northrops and Lockheeds of the world are sitting on all the patents for every clever little idea anybody can possibly come up with and they refuse to do anything with them because that would require taking risks, breaking into new markets, developing whole new product categories. The exact kind of risk that a small entrepreneur could take on a small scale -- except that the patent situation has choked any such attempts to death.

And thus there's no innovation. People continue to do the exact same things with the exact same tools because the slightest deviation from what-was-there-before infringes on someone's patent somewhere. We do things in ways that could be streamlined to a degree that is laughable. Someone working in my group for a month should have collected dozens of ideas for products that have a real market just by listening to what we, ourselves, would be willing to pay money for. Products, innovations, that will never see reality. Because someone out there has a patent.

Ideas are cheap. Innovation is not in the dreaming up of ideas. It's in the execution. And it is that execution that is hampered by people who imagine they should be paid to the end of their lives for having had one idea somewhere.

Re:Another good example...

[Iron Condor]

Could you give even one example of such a retarded lazy dullard?

This reply brought to you by the letters S, C and O.

Re:Another good example...

[swillden]

In all seriousness though, you're hardly "innovating" in any sense of the word if you're doing things that have been described by someone else in a patent filed so long ago that it's issued.

Well, that's one interpretation. Here's another: If something is so obvious that it's regularly and independently reinvented by ordinary engineers just going about their day-to-day job, it's not deserving of patent protection. Unfortunately, demonstrating that lack of patent-worthiness is neither cheap nor easy.

So you mean that patents are working?

There's an easy way to measure whether or not the system is accomplishing its goal. Since the purpose of the patent system is to encourage the publication of inventions so that others can use and build upon them (i.e. promotion of progress), you just need to look at how often engineers search the patent database, looking for solutions to the problems they're trying to solve. If the patent system is effective, it should be a common event that an engineer is excited about finding a nice solution that his company can license.

So you tell me: Are patents working?

Re:Another good example...

[eonlabs]

The biggest issue that brought patents into existence is the concept of development cost. Development cost when working with something physical can be exceedingly high. Ever look at what it costs to make one gear. When developing, people are not dealing with batches of hundreds of thousands of wheels and gears. It gets very expensive very quickly. When you're dealing with software, this is less of a problem unless you need a peculiar piece of hardware for the application. In those situations, it's once again a hardware cost.

The point of a patent is to prevent other people from taking a published work on how to do something useful, recreate it, pay no heed to the original developer, and suck the wind from their sails fast enough to prevent them from recuperating the development costs. Many brilliant men have died unknown only to be recognized years later because they invested everything and reclaimed nothing for it in spite of incredible advancements.

The problem with patents in the computer industry is that, with development costs so low in software, it is easy to develop in the field. When people need to background check for prior art, the associated body of literature is monstrous and evolving rapidly. It is extremely difficult to guarantee that your work has no prior art. Especially with computers as prolific as they are today, this is an even greater problem. Yes, patents in software hamper and are difficult to check because what might look like a simple patent could be broad enough to apply to hundreds of fields.

This is completely different from chip development!

It is not uncommon to, when you see something failing so often for a certain field, think it applies to all aspects and facets of it. The patent system has been around for a long time for a reason. In chip design, the literature does not evolve nearly as rapidly as in software design. In the post, they state that Intel met with the inventor of the technique to discuss using it. This means they were aware of the prior art and used it anyway. For chip development costs, before FPGAs were prolific, it could take months to get an in-hardware solution. Even with FPGAs, developing a processor or the key components for one takes a prohibitively large amount of hardware.

I think it's important to consider turn-around time in the length of a patent, and they fail to do so.
I'm pretty sure it's safe to venture a guess that the patents that are hampering you are software based.

Re:Another good example...

[MadnessASAP]

Thanks for the link, at first I thought it was jsust a patent troll but they definetly go into details about the prediction and synchronization systems which I would say are pretty far beyond the "obvious" of "Just slap 2 cores on a die and run it."

Re:Another good example...

[baegucb_18706]

IBM mainframes had multiple processors in 1994 it looks like: http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/435/spainhower.html Although I didn't work with them until 2000 or so.

University should charge for Intellectual Property

[AHumbleOpinion]

To be fair, I think universities should be granted patents, if only to look good on walls and recognize commitments. But they should be made publicly available if the university benefits from public funds.

No, universities should charge for intellectual properties. It helps fund the universities, what they do not get by licensing IP to corporations they will get from tuition and taxpayer funding. I believe the University of California system works something like:

Any discoveries or inventions made by employees (staff, faculty, or student) must be submitted to the university.
The University will patent it if possible.
The employee(s) will personally receive 35% of the licensing fees collected, 15% will go to his/her department, and the remaining 50% will go to the University in general.
Licensing fees vary, small local startups are charged less then global conglomerates. Favor is shown towards organization that will work with the university (employ/fund faculty and students).
The university publishes a catalog of IP available for licensing.

Seem pretty reasonable IMHO.

Re:Another good example...

[kesuki]

well, that's only 2 years before this patent was granted, and uw wisconsin was probably at the forefront of 'multi-core optimization research' looking at ibm's existing designs and 'improving on them' something that can still result in creating valid patents, that didn't become a big issue for intel until now that multi-core designs a reality of how 'desktops' are becoming more powerful.

IBM was already a huge multi-national even before the PC was born, so they would be sure to patent everything their researchers came up with. if there was a smaller firm i could understand them not getting the patent before a group of college researchers, but with IBM i highly doubt there would be prior art without some form of patent involved, leaving intel paying ibm instead of the University of wisconsin.

i can understand intel not wanting to pay twice for the same thing, and i know the patent office has a hard time with high tech patents, releasing patents for similar technology... but there really is no other way that intel is getting out of paying the uw than to find someone else to pay.

Re:Another good example...

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks for the information. You are right that I don't know how tech transfer offices work.

I still don't believe patents should be transferable to anyone but the inventor. Licensed, maybe, but not transferred.

I have lots more to learn on the subject, though, and I appreciate your polite correction to my mistake.

Re:Another good example...

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks to you and to everyone who corrected my mistaken idea of what WARF and other academic patent transfer offices actually do.

I have lots more to learn on the subject.