> [mailto:vanilla-list-admin at us.netrek.org]On Behalf Of Tom Holub > > On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 07:47:36PM -0500, Steve Sheldon wrote: > > > > Anyway, I don't see anything necessarily wrong with people > at a university > > taking work done there and cashing in as long as they don't > have some unfair > > advantage over others. Meaning, the work that was done at > the University > > has been published and available to all on equal terms. > > My point is, the RSA algorithm was developed "by" the universities of > the professors involved, and thus if anyone has a right to the patents > of that work, it should be the universities. It's really no different > than using the facilities of your employer to work on an invention; > it's not your invention if you needed your employer's facilities and > your time on the job to do it. But did the University own the patent? Was the patent filed for at the time these individals worked for the University? I don't know, but I would think if the University could prove that research which had been done there was the basis for this technology, they could certainly make that case in court. > Certainly I don't have a problem with, say, Eric Brewer going out and > founding Inktomi based on research done at Cal; he's not > suing everyone > who wants to make a web crawler. Ahh, this is more of an issue of the applicability of software patents. I still cannot figure out who thought it was a good idea to allow for the patent of mathematical algorithms or business processes.