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Apple Loses A7/A8 Patent Lawsuit, Could Owe University of Wisconsin Up to $862 Million

Mad Mac Maniac said:
Aren't institutions of higher education meant to do research to propogate information in a free society? Universities aren't businesses (at least not in the manufacturing/production sense). Was the university going to be using their patents to develop products? If this proves to be successful, this might start a trend in university suing over patents/research papers...
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It should be interesting. Could be really bad.

It's been an issue for a while. Universities use public money to fund research which then gets packed away where it won't see the light of day and isn't allowed to benefit anyone. It's even worse when they do it with a big company like Pfizer. University takes public money and does research with private company. Private company gets the rights to the drug and charges astronomical fees to people that need it to save their life.

UW wasn't doing anything with this patent and used public dollars to create it. The knowledge should be shared with anyone looking to utilize it. Why give these institutions money to research things then sit on them and be patent trolls.
 
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So what does this mean for the A10 for next year's iPhone 7? Can Apple change something to avoid licensing fees or is there no other option?
 
s8film40 said:
I had no idea a University would stoop to the level of patent troll. Way to set an example for students.
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Oh you gotta love the fanboy comments like this. So apple were not being patent trolls in their suit against Samsung? Apple was not looking to protect THEIR intellectual property?

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the fanboys are lashing out at a university for daring to protect its intellectual property. Lets be honest and call a spade a spade. Apple stole technology. They were found guilty. They have to pay. Just like Samsung.
 
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SlipperySlop said:
Apple is in the business of making money. They have shareholders to answer to. Not everything they do will be for the benefit of mankind or those who don't want to spend money. There are many other makers of cell phones that you could choose.
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That's not the point. The only point made here (jokingly) was that extra costs might lead Apple to keep their more profitable price/storage tiers. If people want a 32+ GB iPhone, they will get it regardless of whether it costs $650 or $750, period.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
It should be interesting. Could be really bad.

It's been an issue for a while. Universities use public money to fund research which then gets packed away where it won't see the light of day and isn't allowed to benefit anyone. It's even worse when they do it with a big company like Pfizer. University takes public money and does research with private company. Private company gets the rights to the drug and charges astronomical fees to people that need it to save their life.

UW wasn't doing anything with this patent and used public dollars to create it. The knowledge should be shared with anyone looking to utilize it. Why give these institutions money to research things then sit on them and be patent trolls.
Click to expand...

Yeah it sounds like maybe this was all started in the interest of the professor(s) and not so much the University itself. Could be just a bunch of lone wolves trying to cash in. If they do win perhaps this is going to have a much more negative impact for all these Universities as they will then get peanuts worth of funding from private companies.

-Mike
 
SlipperySlop said:
Apple is in the business of making money. They have shareholders to answer to. Not everything they do will be for the benefit of mankind or those who don't want to spend money. There are many other makers of cell phones that you could choose.
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Apple's marketing says differently. Tim Cook says differently.
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ok-climate-change-sceptics-ditch-apple-shares

Article primarily about shareholders and climate initiatives, but speaks to Cook's feelings about shareholders vs mankind.
 
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s8film40 said:
I had no idea a University would stoop to the level of patent troll. Way to set an example for students.
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WARF is a nonprofit organization that serves the University. They protect the innovation that comes from the university to pump money back into new research.
 
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CygnusTC said:
There should be some kind of time limit on patents that says you have to actually PRODUCT the patent within a certain number of years or it expires. I am not necessary defending Apple but this kind of stuff happens a lot.
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Why exactly should there be a commercially available product? The product is the patent and the know-how behind it. If an idea doesn't work, then nobody would ever infringe it!

An idea may not be economically feasible to fully develop into a launched product at the time of inception to the organisation or individual that thought of it. In fact, you'd completely destroy the ability for individuals to file patents - and give excessively massive advantages to already large corporations.

Not only that, you create a whole mess of problems if there is a deadline on an patent. What if it takes longer than that to actually develop? Medicine has extended patent durations because of the extremely long period of time it takes to go from a patent to a marketable product (a big part which is legal work).

Remember; its the first one to file that gets the patent (if granted) - but if you impose arbitrary 'to market' deadlines then you'd end up with a situation where an idea for a product has to have its patent application delayed in order to meet this arbitrary deadline. So if a small company that doesn't have the resources to rush a product invents something, they can't patent it. A competitor thats much more capable of 'rushing to market' can come in later and snipe the patent.
 
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Mad Mac Maniac said:
Aren't institutions of higher education meant to do research to propogate information in a free society? Universities aren't businesses (at least not in the manufacturing/production sense). Was the university going to be using their patents to develop products? If this proves to be successful, this might start a trend in university suing over patents/research papers...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm baffled by self-proclaimed centers of education being allowed to own patents (patents in theory being good things). But that's something which should be taken up with legislators to change the law if we as a society agree that it's counter-productive.
 
The University of Wisconsin is where Steve Jobs' biological parents met. His father was a PhD student and his mother was his teaching assistant. Now this is what I call a coincidence.
 
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CygnusTC said:
This is one of the things that bugs me about patents. I am sure the researchers came up with something IN THEORY. Apple actually created it! Whether they knew about the patent or not it's kind of silly how you can patent almost ANYTHING without ever having to CREATE it. There should be some kind of time limit on patents that says you have to actually PRODUCE the patent within a certain number of years or it expires. I am not necessary defending Apple but this kind of stuff happens a lot.
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Yeah, let's give even more power to huge corporations...
 
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mikefla said:
Yeah it sounds like maybe this was all started in the interest of the professor(s) and not so much the University itself. Could be just a bunch of lone wolves trying to cash in. If they do win perhaps this is going to have a much more negative impact for all these Universities as they will then get peanuts worth of funding from private companies.

-Mike
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This is nothing new. Pretty much any University with a decent research department has patents they license, and if necessary, defend. Carnegie Mellon popped Marvell Technologies for over a billion dollars (amount overturned and being recalculated). University of Pitt got $85 million, U of Minn suing the big telcos, and also won $450 in damages and licensing from big pharma. The list is long. Do a patent search against any large Univ. and you will be shocked at what they've patented. They want to monetize their work.
 
isomorphic said:
Interesting you'd use that choice of words.

The anti-coagulant Warfarin is commonly used as rat poison.

Hint, the WARF in Warfarin is Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
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Oh god, you've brought back my days of medicinal chemistry. My teacher drew warfarin and said "anyone know where the name comes from" (it was a trick question. WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) + ARIN (from coumarin, one of the natural products from which warfarin is derived).

Anyways, I love the amount of fan boyism here. Apple is God and does not need to buy intellectual property. Then again, a Wisconsin court handling a University of Wisconsin case (state school I imagine) sounds inherently biased. Regardless, if one of you invented something here and someone stole it, you probably would not be happy.
 
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JD92 said:
If Intel hadn't been licensing this patent, they would have been a more lucrative target than Apple as their numbers are much bigger than Apple's
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Apple now ships more processor chips than Intel does. Especially with the decline in the PC market in conjunction with more cores per chip being common in the server market.
 
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