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Details You're Not Supposed To See From Boston U's Patent Settlements

Posted by timothy on from the those-lights-can-be-infuriating-at-night dept.

curtwoodward (2147628) writes "In January, Boston University settled lawsuits against two dozen big technology companies for allegedly using its patented blue LED technology without permission. But apparently, the school's lawyers were a little too forthcoming for everyone's tastes — they recently asked a federal judge to delete a court filing that spelled out all of the companies who settled. Luckily, we still had the unredacted version, which shows that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola and many more are on the list, even if they don't want you to know it."

8 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Universities should have no patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Universities should serve the public good. Anything created there should go into the public commons and be available to anybody and everybody to use. When you make the choice to be, or work at, a university you trade profit for service. If you can't accept that, then work somewhere else, or be some other type of an institution than a university.

    1. Re:Universities should have no patents by brainboyz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed, double dipping on "private" profits and public funds seems a little...what do they always call the private sector?...Oh yeah, greedy.

    2. Re:Universities should have no patents by ebno-10db · · Score: 4, Informative

      Blame the Bayh–Dole Act. When it was passed, it seemed to make sense. It had wide support - Bayh and Dole were on very opposite sides of the aisle. In practice it's meant that universities are more worried about protecting their "intellectual property" than about publishing and disseminating research results. For that reason a lot of academic researchers are unhappy about it too. It's time to take what turned out to be a bad ides and ditch it. Universities shouldn't be run the way for-profit companies are.

    3. Re:Universities should have no patents by RenderSeven · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As NPR pointed out a few months ago, "Do universities really need a Director of Diversity at $175,000 per year?"

    4. Re:Universities should have no patents by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh please, what a load of crap. Yes, large companies will get the tech for free (though they'll only get the very basics, they'll still have to develop manufacturing techniques, which the university research isn't going to help them with that much). But it's not just one company, it's ALL companies that have a desire to use this tech. And then the rest of society benefits from having the knowledge, and the technology cheaply available since all competitors now have it.

      It's no different than open-source software. Having it out there enriches everyone, even when big companies use it for their own purposes, or build products based on it. It advances the state of the art faster, increases quality, and reduces costs (resulting in reduced prices to end-users). You really think we'd be better off if all our consumer routers and various other devices had to pay $$$ for VxWorks licenses rather than having Linux and BSD available for free?

      The University gets recognition for their invention.

      and the possibility to build a company assembling blue LEDs without having to worry about patents. Well, I guess that's something.

      That's a very big something; it's the whole idea. Patented tech with high license fees doesn't benefit us as much as freely-available tech.

    5. Re:Universities should have no patents by mjr167 · · Score: 4, Informative

      One of my coworkers is teaching a class at the local university. They are paying him $6000 for the semester. He has 30 students, each student pays the uni $2600 to take the class so the uni got $78,000 in tuition for this one class and had to pay the professor $6000. Where do you think the money goes?

      It's an online class. There is no lab equipment, no building fee...

  2. Re:another interesting fact by Arsist · · Score: 4, Funny

    You don't know what a signature is.

  3. Re:Suing customers instead of manufacturers? by bws111 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Say what? Exactly who are Apple, etc, customers of? Certainly not BU. And what do Apple, et al do with those LEDs? They import them into the US, then they sell them. And here is what the US Patent law says: Whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention within the United States, or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term the patent therefor, infringes the patent. You know how long that statement has been in patent law? Since Thomas Jefferson wrote it.