Universities are the worst IPR violators – they simultaneously infringe and troll

[Rebecca, Robert, “Universities: The Fallen Angels of Bayh-Dole?” Daedalus 147.4, GDI-JCR]

In 2008, intellectual property law scholar Mark Lemley posed the provocative question, “are universities patent trolls?”39 The idea that universities can be patent trolls (that is, patent assertion entities that do not themselves commercialize technology but profit by asserting patents against commercial firms) soon became more commonplace, as major research universities used their patents to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in damage awards and settlements.40 Criticized for behaving like patent trolls, universities have sometimes sought to avoid the reputational costs of litigation by selling their rights to undisputed patent trolls.41 Like patent assertion entities, universities can enforce their patents with little fear of provoking counterclaims for infringement of the patents held by the defendants. Patent infringement litigation against universities and academic researchers is quite rare. This allows university scientists to infringe patents in their laboratories with relative impunity even as universities enforce their patents against other institutions.42 But this is largely the result of forbearance by patent owners rather than legal immunity from suit.