Caltech Ends Its Wi-Fi Lawsuit Against Apple and Broadcom (theverge.com) 29
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge:
Caltech has had some ups (winning $1.1 billion) and some downs (losing the $1.1 billion award and being ordered to a trial on damages) since suing Apple and Broadcom in 2016 over Wi-Fi patents. Reuters reported this week that Caltech is dropping its yearslong lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom, about two months after the companies came to a "potential settlement."
Caltech wrote in a filing with a US District Court in California that it would drop its claims "with prejudice," meaning it can't refile its case, and asked that Broadcom do so as well, stating later that Broadcom "does not oppose this request." Caltech also writes that it will dismiss its claims against Apple — again, "with prejudice."
The filing then says that Caltech "respectfully requests that all counterclaims asserted by Apple also be dismissed."
Caltech wrote in a filing with a US District Court in California that it would drop its claims "with prejudice," meaning it can't refile its case, and asked that Broadcom do so as well, stating later that Broadcom "does not oppose this request." Caltech also writes that it will dismiss its claims against Apple — again, "with prejudice."
The filing then says that Caltech "respectfully requests that all counterclaims asserted by Apple also be dismissed."
Here Is Some Money, Now Go Away. (Score:2)
Money, Lawyers, Lawyer Money Made Laws-1, Justice-0.
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I'm sure Caltech will enjoy their brand new state of the art Steve Jobs Management Empowerment and Technology Research Center.
the only winners in this fiasco (Score:3)
are the greedy lawyers... and the US pretend all of this contributes to GDP, but has NO PURPOSE whatsoever
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Unless, of course, they're already on a retainer...
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> "kill all the lawyers"
The context there is the King wants noone around to argue for the citizens he wants to prosecute.
Short verbatim clips often reverse the meaning. Ancient propaganda technique still in use on Cable TV "news" every day.
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> "kill all the lawyers"
The context there is the King wants noone around to argue for the citizens he wants to prosecute.
Short verbatim clips often reverse the meaning. Ancient propaganda technique still in use on Cable TV "news" every day.
I am amazed that you are among those at /. that actually got that right. I can't even remember the original thread, but kudos, nevertheless! Live long and prosper!
Re: the only winners in this fiasco (Score:2)
Was it Shakespeare that wrote something to the effect of "kill all the lawyers"?
Yes, but in the opposite way to what you meant.
The character Dick The Butcher, a mass murderer, was part of a gang wanting to overthrow the government and enable mob rule. He was planning to extend his string of mayhem by killing the lawyers, so nobody can be prosecuted for crimes under the new regime.
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Was it Shakespeare that wrote something to the effect of "kill all the lawyers"?
Yes, but in the opposite way to what you meant.
The character Dick The Butcher, a mass murderer, was part of a gang wanting to overthrow the government and enable mob rule. He was planning to extend his string of mayhem by killing the lawyers, so nobody can be prosecuted for crimes under the new regime.
Wow! Kudos and high praise to those on /. who not just toss around literary references but clearly know their stuff! Its great to see thinking and commentary that spans constraints of the usual boxes. I can't even remember what started this conversation, but its less important. Live long and prosper!
Had to look this one up (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like Caltech has wifi patents related to 802.11n and 802.11ac. Can someone remind me why it's a good idea for a public university to hold patents and charge licensing fees to the public which funded the research behind said patents? Honest question. Outside of someone getting away with it because they can.
Re:Had to look this one up (Score:5, Insightful)
Because by licensing its inventions, it can reduce the amount of money it needs to aquire (from, for instance, via govt).
You could find a *lot* of university scolarships and PhD programs with a billion dollars.
Its actually reasonably rare for universities to sue for patents, patent trolling is not *really* a university modus operandi. I assume in this case they had set up an existing licensing scheme for it, and Broadcom/Apple just noped it and used the tech anyway, or at least if one is to believe caltechs claim
Re:Had to look this one up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Had to look this one up (Score:5, Insightful)
So the government gives them money to research good things that benefit the general public, and in return they get to lock those things up behind patent paywalls? I'm not sure you have thought through this plan.
I also don't know what you think "reasonably rare" means, but in the last few years, Columbia University won a case against Norton LifeLock ($185M), Purdue separately sued both WolfSpeed and Google, UPenn sued Sarepta, USF and Michigan jointly sued Novartis, NYU sued ResMed, etc. Somewhat older, Carnegie Mellon v Marvell is one of the ten largest patent-infringement awards in US history.
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Because by licensing its inventions, it can reduce the amount of money it needs to aquire (from, for instance, via govt).
You could find a *lot* of university scolarships and PhD programs with a billion dollars.
I doubt this will be the case.
When my university department won several million dollars in a similar situation (suing over a tech patent), NONE of the money went to help students. It all went to various things that benefited existing faculty (conference support, discretionary travel money, special targeted research stipends, etc. etc.). I expect the same will happen at CalTech.
More broadly, licensing fees and whatnot tends to go into pools of money for broad projects (for example, new faculty startup funds)
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Re: Had to look this one up (Score:1)
Licensing and patents stifle innovation. It gives the benefit to big companies to then implement innovation done by tax payer money.
Large companies have 3 things: lots of money, lawyers and bureaucracy. What they donâ(TM)t have is innovation, fast turnarounds and drive, which only startups have.
So if you want big companies to become even bigger, they need the government helping hand, they need bureaucracy, lawyers and banks, something the government excels at providing. Patents and long copyright exten
Re:Had to look this one up (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone remind me why it's a good idea for a public university to hold patents and charge licensing fees to the public which funded the research behind said patents? Honest question.
well, most inventions are possible thanks to basic science, basic science is very, very expensive, has very little direct financial return and most if not all of it is funded by the public so ... you might question the lot of freeloading that is going on in patents and licensing fees in general, not only in the context of publicly funded institutions.
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They released a slightly better dynamic error correction algorithm, then submitted it to be a part of the open standards.
They waited until after billions of chips implemented it in hardware and then patented it and demanded money.
Caltech is the reason the wifi alliance now requires preemptive licensing of patents to them before accepting new or updated algorithms to the open standards.
Re: Had to look this one up (Score:1)
You shouldn't be able to patent stuff already implemented by everyone, I mean you're already not supposed to be able to do that, once again the USPTO is corrupt AF
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Try encouraging success (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of trying to own what students/faculty do, try:
* Encouraging entrepreneurship
* Setting up incubators, doing early investment in student/faculty startups
* Promoting successful associated businesses, accepting donations
The University of Maryland has a beautiful new Computer Science building right next to the main campus entrance, courtesy of Brendan Iribe (Oculus founder), Sergey Brin (Google founder), etc.
You get more donations when you don't have an adversarial relationship with your innovators.
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In general, the benefits of education and research accrue to the public broadly thus it is reasonable for the costs to accrue to the public broadly.
In specific, there are specific benefits of this specific research that are accruing to specific private interests who then derive income from specific members of the public. It is then reasonable for the public broadly to be reimbursed for the portion of the costs that led to benefits that do not accrue to the public broadly.
If the benefits really did accrue to
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Isn't Caltech a privately-owned university? It was one of the reasons why the Big Bang Theory gave scholarships to UCLA instead, as UCLA was a publicly owned university. It was one of the mistakes the writers came to regret. (They stuck with Caltech in the end because although Caltech didn't want to be associated with the BBT in the first season, after it got popular they decided the writers were free and invited them to shoot on campus as much as needed).
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Caltech is not a "public" university. It is a private university. It also provides financial aid to highest percentage of its students among the top universities. They spend huge amount of donated money from private donors on R&D and augments that with the IP licenses to continue to do more research and also fund the departments which don't generate IP revenue (Geology, match, astronomy and so on). Caltech researchers also get funding from govt and when that funding is used, it is governed by the applic
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CalTech has never been, is not, and probably never will be a Public school. It is private.
Cal*State, and University of California are the public university systems.
Having Cal in the name doesn't make it public. The Disney founded CalArts as another example.
Federal law requires universities to license paten (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Federal law requires universities to license pa (Score:5, Informative)
> Federal law actually requires universities to license patents, and by implication, to sue infringers if necessary
They must license if they hold the patent but they may publish instead of patenting.
The revenue isn't worth all the court costs to society.