When Universities Attack Businesses Using Patents

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2012-10-16 19:36:14 UTC
Modified: 2012-10-16 19:36:14 UTC

Old university

Summary: Patent aggression no longer monopolised by trolls and corporations; UC Regent joins the club

A month ago a university decided to use patents aggressively, earning itself a lot of negative publicity, such as:

The UC Board of Regents and a University of California patent licensee have filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart claiming patent infringement.

There are other cases of patent harassment, but when public institutions participate in it the public should be outraged. Here is an example of crushing competition: "San Francisco real estate information site Trulia has been sued by larger competitor Zillow for patent infringement over a software program that helps make home valuations more accurate."

Here is where public institutions provide a platform to patent lobbying:

Liveblogging the America Invents Act: One Year Later conference at the Indiana University Mauer School of Law. Warning and disclaimer: Quality may vary and these don't necessary reflect my opinions.

It is troubling when universities become quite so political and also sue companies. US citizens ought to shun such universities. ⬆

Comments

NotZed

2012-10-17 07:29:00

Here in oz universities have been transformed from places of education and learning ... to places of `training' and commercially exploitable `results'. Pretty much all part of the obsession with cash that seems to drive everyone these days and the result of the economic rationalism of the 80s and 90s, aggressive 'competition' in society (imported from the usa), nasty mean selfishness (not sure where that's from, perhaps from the shock jocks and the politicians), howard's 'battler' crap (homegrown name for the world-wide phenomenon of exploiting stupid people for political purposes) which portrayed higher education as 'elitist', so on, and so forth.

Higher education today as seen simply as a cost that must be paid for and recouped, not an investment in the shared future well-being of a whole society. Generating eye-pee and forcing it down others throats it is just one path toward that.

And everyone cheers for it ... as they've been trained to.

(Economic rationalism is apparently in Australian term ... so definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rationalism )

Uni of Mexico has some really cool buildings and mosaics.

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When Universities Attack Businesses Using Patents

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