Australia's patent on Wi-Fi show that patents held by the education sector can be big money for Universities. But in the article they're talking about how these two schools have already spent tens of millions on this. That's money that could have gone to research, scholarships, grants, and reducing the insanely high tuition fees students have to deal with.
I hate this model of how Universities, instead of seeking to help each other and help the world benefit from open innovation, instead are willing to pay huge legal fees so that one of the two gets a massive payoff while the other is stuck with a large legal bill.
Editas, a biotech company, is funding Broad's legal fees [1]. I had thought that another startup was funding Berkeley's side, but am having trouble finding a source.
There's another good example: H264, and the related audio patents. The Fraunhofer Society has funded years of university research just with the license money from MP4 and similar. Always keep this in mind when choosing between h264 and vp8/vp9.
> Always keep this in mind when choosing between h264 and vp8/vp9.
That's worded like you want to guilt me into approving of the actions of the patent pool. I'd rather not. Give me a link and I'll just donate $2 to them while strongly supporting AV1 over H.264/H.265.
They don't accept donations, they only accept tax funding or money from patent licenses.
Processing donations would be far too much work for such a research organisation.
And if you want to avoid giving away your right to sue for patent infringements, you'll want to avoid VP8/VP9 anyway, as the patent grant is similar to Facebook's and Tesla's patent license, and does end as soon as you sue.
I hate this model of how Universities, instead of seeking to help each other and help the world benefit from open innovation, instead are willing to pay huge legal fees so that one of the two gets a massive payoff while the other is stuck with a large legal bill.