Policy —

November’s “Stupid Patent of the Month,” brought to you by Penn State

EFF: Patent reads like "you ate a dictionary of buzzwords, drank a bottle of tequila."

November’s “Stupid Patent of the Month,” brought to you by Penn State
EFF

Three months ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation inaugurated a monthly tradition in which they wrote about a "Stupid Patent of the Month." The first patent they publicized was basically a description of a doctor's "computer-secretary." Since then, they've highlighted a vague software patent owned by a serial litigant, a patent on filming a yoga class, and a patent with a formula for curing cancer (a combination of "sesame seeds, green beans, coffee, meat, evening primrose seeds," among other things.)

This month, EFF shines a light not on an off-the-wall lone inventor, but on a source that some may find surprising: a public research institution. Earlier this year, Penn State University made the controversial decision to sell off some of its patents to make money. Even though it only sold licenses to two of the 73 patents on auction, it's decided to hold a second auction on December 8.

"The patent auction is a final attempt to capture value from some of our older unlicensed patents and put them into the hands of companies that can use them at a favorable price," said Ron Huss, the university's associate VP for research.

One of the items for sale is US Patent No. 8,442,839, entitled "Agent-based collaborative recognition-primed decision-making." The lead inventors are PSU professors John Yen and Michael McNeese. The patent essentially describes different ways that people work together to solve a problem.

Steps include "receiving information regarding a current situation to be analyzed," interacting to receive “assistance in the form of assumptions or expectancies about the situation," and using "collected information to determine whether a decision about the situation is evolving in an anticipated direction." A PSU news site describes the invention as using a framework called "Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork."

"The patent reads a little like what might result if you ate a dictionary filled with buzzwords and drank a bottle of tequila," writes EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer. He notes the patent was originally rejected by the patent office. "Penn State responded by amending its claim to 'include a team-oriented computer architecture that transforms subject matter.' In other words, it took an abstract patent and said, 'Do it on a computer.'"

Nazer expects the patent would be found invalid under the new rules created by the Supreme Court in the Alice v. CLS Bank case, a decision this summer that ruled out "do it on a computer"-style patents.

But the patent could still have value to "patent trolls" that could use it to extract settlements for less than the price of defending a patent suit, which can costs more than $1 million through trial. Penn State's auction is selling patents starting at the price of just $5,000—well under what it costs to prosecute a patent of one's own.

"We urge Penn State and all universities to be more responsible," writes Nazer. "Instead of selling patents that have little value except as litigation weapons, universities should focus on true technology transfer—partnering with others to bring new technologies into the world."

Penn State's Office of Technology Management didn't respond to a request for comment about this story.

Some universities have been increasingly aggressive about using their patents in court in recent years. This year, Carnegie Mellon University is seeing a record-breaking verdict against Marvell through appeal, while the University of Minnesota is demanding royalties from every major cell phone carrier, to name just two examples. Dozens of universities have sold patents to Intellectual Ventures, the largest patent-holding company. Universities were important advocates in fighting against this year's patent reform bill that failed in Congress.

PSU isn't the first patent-holder to consider an auction as a means for raising cash. The most well-publicized patent auction was run by Ocean Tomo, a patent consultancy that sold millions of dollars of patents over the course of a few years before its auction business went bust in 2009, in part because Intellectual Ventures had stopped buying.

Channel Ars Technica