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  • PeachNCream - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    I would hate to own a phone that has 95,109 unread e-mails waiting for me. Yikes!

    With regards to the lawsuit - Eh, whatever. Appeal is pending so nothing has really changed just yet.
  • Makaveli - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    I've seen worse know a few lawyers.
  • Samus - Sunday, February 2, 2020 - link

    ^^^
  • PeachNCream - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link

    Is that just a lawyer thing? I would think approaching 100K in unread e-mail traffic would be an indicator of some pretty terrible spam filtering, a VERY broken mail server, or years of inbox laziness and neglect. If that's the latter, then I certainly would not want to retain a lawyer that is so irresponsible.
  • dalanamurr - Thursday, January 13, 2022 - link

    I think that the leadership of the university did the right thing by starting to defend their rights. Nobody e would like to share their creations with other people. I studied at this university and did great because I often used https://gradesfixer.com/ with essay samples for college students when I had problems with my homework. Now I work for a prestigious company and also create many new products. And I consider it important to patent my inventions so that people know their creator.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    Patent law in the US doesn't make sense.

    How can they sue the end-user of a product (Apple), when the manufacturer of said product (Broadcom) is following a published standard (802.11n / 802.11ac)? Shouldn't they only be able to sue the people behind the standard, as it's the standard that is infringing the patent? And isn't there something about standards-essential patents being required to offer FRAND licensing fees to everyone?
  • nevcairiel - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    Practically all tech is patented to some degree, which means that standards are based on patents, and if you want to implement them, you have to pay for that. The article does not mention what conditions were offered, but it does say that Apple and Broadcom refused to pay at all because they do not recognize the validity of the patent - no matter if they were offered FRAND terms or not.
  • JHBoricua - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    Not only that, but apparently the expert witness Broadcom and Apple used in the trial was not only had to correct his testimony but also struggle to explain the mistakes, weakening Broadcom's defense.

    Also from theRegister site:

    "The case itself was notable for the peculiar deposition of a key figure: Broadcom engineer Alvin Lin, who was chief architect of most of the technology in dispute. Lin didn't testify, a move that led Caltech to accuse Broadcom of "hiding him away," which the chip designer denied.

    The deposition, shown to the jury, revealed Lin seemed to be confused when asked if he understood where he was, and then where he got his master's degree from. I don't understand the question, he told baffled questioners. When he was then asked if he knew what a low-density parity check was – i.e. the tech he has written source code for and which is included in Broadcom's chipsets – he said he didn't."
  • Santoval - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    If this guy is so .. eloquent in depositions it is no wonder Broadcom hid him away. Who knows how much worse he would have made their case if he testified in trial..
  • EliteRetard - Friday, January 31, 2020 - link

    FRAND doesn't mean free.

    At $1.40 per device they are asking for under 0.2%.
  • mode_13h - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    So, you figure $700 per device? They're not talking only about phones. I'm sure they also mean to include lower cost devices, like iPod Touch.

    Why is $1.40/device reasonable? Depending on how many other patents the device utilizes, for which license fees must be paid, it could be quite a lot.

    I'd like to see governments assert an eminent domain argument, for standards. Once the standard is settled, I think there's a strong argument for the public good that should shut out claims by parties who didn't assert their claims before or during the standardization process. However, I don't know if it would necessarily apply, in this case.
  • mode_13h - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    One point I forgot to mention: you're looking at the final sale price. However, if they charge a $1.40 tax on Apple (or its suppliers), then that amount is subject to the usual markups.
  • bill.rookard - Sunday, February 2, 2020 - link

    My problem isn't that they're charging for the patent, my problem is that they receive federal funding dollars for the research - then turn around the research they develop and patent it which costs the public again. So the public pays for the development, then we pay for what we paid to develop.

    If they want to patent what they develop, fine, but we shouldn't be paying for it with our tax dollars.
  • Spunjji - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link

    "my problem is that they receive federal funding dollars for the research"
    I see people make claims like this a lot, but I've yet to see it made by a person with a working knowledge of higher education and research funding. I think you'll find it's not that simple.

    "If they want to patent what they develop, fine, but we shouldn't be paying for it with our tax dollars."
    Fine, but then they'll need more of your tax dollars to make up the funding shortfall. Skip out on that, and universities will begin dying off at an even faster rate, and it'll be harder (and more expensive) to provide the higher education required to develop technology like this in the first place.

    It might be best to just stop being irritated by how "your" tax dollars are being spent in situations where you don't fully understand the systems they're being invested into.
  • Rookierookie - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link

    Caltech is a private school. That's not to say they don't receive federal funding, but can you really judge how much tax dollars was involved in the research?
  • id4andrei - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    How? Exactly in the same way Apple sued Samsung for patents google infringed with android that ultimately Samsung had to pay for.
  • flgt - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    I'm getting tired of these universities. They put all their students in massive debt with crazy tuition and beg for donations from companies. Then they turn around and start suing everyone. My last recruiting visit for my company felt like a shake down. Are these educational institutions or my competitors?
  • imaheadcase - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    Its kind of silly to me that a university can hold any patent at all. Unless it was someone who actually was under contract from them for the purpose of making it in the first place, it should be a open and cut free thing. I would be pissed if i was a group of students who invented something and the uni decided its property of them now because you made it under them.

    In fact i would say they same thing about any company, apparently you can make up something new at any company and if was on the clock, they can say it was for the company and take it. Its actually happened before at walmart.
  • mode_13h - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link

    Eh, it cuts both ways. If you look at it from the University's perspective, they don't want profs and students using their funding and facilities to research the core IP for some startup, essentially for free, and then leave to go found it and pocket the windfall.

    It's especially bad for tenured profs, who can basically check out, do a startup, all while their seat is there and waiting for them. There's a case to be made that the University should have a stake.

    Anyway, let's not forget that patents are about putting information and techniques into the public domain (eventually). As such, they're not fundamentally incompatible with the academic mission.
  • Spunjji - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link

    They don't just "say" that - it's pretty openly stated up-front. If you were in a group of students and were pissed that your uni patented your invention, the first question would be how you got that far without realising that's how all of this works.
  • Spunjji - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link

    Would you like some man with that straw?

    Seriously though, when you walk into an article about one university and generate a rant about "these universities" "suing everyone", it kinda looks like you have an axe to grind that isn't remotely justified by the data.
  • flgt - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link

    You must be in academia to come up with a pointless cliche post like that. Of course I have an axe to grind. You shouldn’t give money to universities out of the goodness of your heart. You should get ownership or access to the IP that is generated.

    I will now await your response on how it’s just too complicated for us regular people to understand.
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link

    I'm not in academia, FWIW.

    Anyway, I don't have a problem with universities patenting & licensing technologies, because I don't want tax dollars funding that kind of research. They can self-fund it with patent royalties and corporate grants, and I'm fine with that.

    What I want tax dollars funding is basic research, because there's basically no incentive for anyone else to do it, and it's a vital upstream seed for subsequent technological developments.

    Anyway, without taxpayer-funded basic research, universities are becoming IP factories and startup incubators. However, without continued investment in basic research, the well of research on which this IP is being built will start to run dry.

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