 So I told you that Brian would have been a better candidate, but he's got a longer distance to travel I guess Yeah So There's a lot of research in in patents which shows huge differences between different areas of technology So Mike Moyer and I for instance have argued that The patent system works well as a property system in pharmaceuticals But that in areas like software and computers it doesn't work well Most of the patent role litigation for instance overwhelming Lee is about software patents So I'm going to talk specifically about so this this is a bigger problem than just universities universities don't have a very large role They're not the main culprit here. There's a bigger systemic problem But it's still important to talk about number one What's the role of universities had it given given the problems in the patent system regarding tech patents software patents? What is their role? What role do they play and in particular? That's that's important to look at because as patent reform efforts have been Attempted in the last several years Universities have been one of the most outspoken opponents of reforms that at least in my view would have helped Ameliorate this problem. So that they're there. They're a large significant political player It behooves us to look at what's actually going on. So the some of the best research that was done was done by Brian Love I'll also refer to research done by Mark Lemley and Feldman Robin film. Yeah I'm getting I must be getting old So anyway from the perspective of the university It appears so Brian Brian did a survey of Electrical engineering computer science professors and and study the universities patents in these areas it appears that there are significant at least informal incentives provided to faculty to patent in terms of Ten year in terms of promotions in terms of raises So the from the standpoint of a scientist And end of the university What are the possible benefits of some of this patenting? One is money. It may help fund more research Two is patents may provide some sort of way of encouraging research and perhaps more directly encouraging commercialization What Brian found out in in in this area at least The patents are not an average a source of money that in fact that the average return in on on a Tech patents is negative universities are losing money on their their Technology transfer efforts in this area although it should be said that that's highly skewed so that a Very small percent of the licensing universities are making most of the revenue So they're the 3% are profitable. You've got 25% who have zero licensing revenues even though they have licenses You've got a lot of them losing money so First reason doesn't seem to hold much weight Second does it help do these patents help spur research? So He asked the question Does it motivate me to do more research? No Does it motivate me to do higher quality research? No What about commercialization? The other picture is more promising Significant number almost half Thought that Patents helped commercialize their research But it's still worth pointing out that the ones it's still a minority. We're talking about that found a positive effect So it's not at best. It's perhaps a weak incentive so the flip side of this is The this problem of universities as patent rolls Oh, so there there are two ways that they they seem to be playing this role One is by asserting their patents without real technology transfer That's something that a troll does and the other is by licensing to patent aggregators, which are trolls so you know the poster example is the eolus patent which was Granted to a University, California Researcher who went off and started a one-person company and began by suing companies that this was in back in 1993 they demonstrated the ability of a Web browser to use a plug-in Now the fact is that that was something that had been done earlier It wasn't wasn't novel and it's pretty fairly obvious idea to anybody in Computers, but nevertheless They got a patent and they actually Prevealed in their first lawsuit which is which is against Microsoft in 1999 They in by 2003 they won a five hundred and twenty one million dollar judgment against Microsoft which was later tailored, but still pretty earth-shattering stuff. It sounds like big money to a university It certainly sounds like a big loss to Microsoft Microsoft settled for some undisclosed amount and then a couple years later Eolus went around and started suing lots of other companies but By 2012 it was challenged by one of these companies and the patent wasn't validated so you have this nearly 20-year history of You know a bad patent causing damage in the tech industry University made some money on it. Yeah, but perhaps not in a very good way So the In terms of universities Asserting their own patents Lemley and Feldman Looked at those situations. So one of the things is you know what a patent roll does is is it goes out it threatens to sue you and Says you know pay me some money And I won't sue and and so what you're buying is not actually technology There's no transfer of knowledge. You're not fulfilling the university's knowledge, you know mission there of Commercializing their knowledge and making it available and distributing to society. You're just getting money What what they're buying is a promise not to sue so that so they looked at the extent that that university demands to private companies Were accompanied by evidence of knowledge actually being transferred So one question they asked was did it lead to new products or features? No Did it lead to transfer of technical knowledge in terms of things like know-how no Did it lead to personnel being transferred? So, you know very typically when there's a spin-out Graduate students will go and take jobs and and they'll help transfer the knowledge that isn't contained in the patent the tacit knowledge So it doesn't seem that At least in terms of asserting patents in this field, you know and again biomedical stuff may be entirely different in this field That university is a really playing a very positive role So the Universities have also played a role in terms of licensing their patents to Patent trolls or what are patent aggregators? Which are companies that buy up lots of licenses and then threaten to sue companies so that I think fairly early the the universities became aware that they were on occasionally thin ethical ice and and and they the autumn put out a A Statement that many universities signed that universities would better serve the public interest by ensuring appropriate use of the technology By requiring their licensees to operate under a business model that encourages Commercialization and does not rely primarily on threats of infringement litigation to generate revenue That's a nice statement Intellectual ventures is the largest patent troll the largest patent aggregator They have patents from over 60 universities Many of those universities are also investors in an intellectual venture. So they they get a financial benefit When intellectual ventures threatens to sue people Caltech alone exclusively licensed 51 patents to intellectual ventures So there's some real I think, you know questionable Behavior going on by universities in this area While there's no doubt, you know, the university actions are very small compared to the to the big players in the patent troll world Still is it's very troubling that they are contributing to the problem by their own actions and also troubling that they're contributing to the problem by playing a role in terms of their political influence in terms of playing an obstructionist role in terms of Significant patent reform that might help ameliorate the problem