Intel Mandates Universities Receiving Funds Not File Patents 223
sproketboy writes "Since January, four U.S. universities have agreed to host Intel Science and Technology Centers that will be funded at the rate of $2.5 million a year for five years. But wait, there's a catch: the company has made it a condition that in order to receive the millions, your university must open source any resulting software and inventions that come out of this research funding."
Wait... (Score:3, Funny)
Intel NOT acting anticompetitive?
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With Meego, giving away tablets at free software conferences, and Nokia siding with Microsoft, Intel might just be the best hope for free software.
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This is anticompetitive, it ensures no one else can use these patents as an advantage against intel. Works out well for all of us, but it prevents someone using this money to find something out, patent it, and then bend intel over for the patented tech.
They've extinguished POTENTIAL competition before it actually existed.
On that note however, nothing from any university that receives any public funding what so ever should be patentable. You must apply it to the university as a whole, not one program or pa
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"These patents" don't exist yet. Intel is simply saying, "You can either have our money now (via funding) or you can have it later (via licensing), but not both. Your choice."
Fixed that for you. :)
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This is anticompetitive, it ensures no one else can use these patents as an advantage against intel.
No, it ensures noone can use those patents against anyone else.....
No law prohibits a company from being anticompetitive in the form of disallowing another company from stealing the legal rights to their own investment, to enable the 'competitor' to put the company who made the original investment at a disadvantage, by having rights to research the original company funded.
Intel could have specified
Re:It's competitive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's competitive. (Score:5, Insightful)
You get to a point where you realize that as soon as you spend a shitload of money trying to corner the market on something, the time you've wasted ends up giving the competition a leg-up in a new area you SHOULD have been spending that time and energy working on.
Just open source fucking everything and use it to make money on support. There is no gross margin in hardware anymore, and none in the perceivable future -- and Intel knows it.
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Just open source fucking everything and use it to make money on support. There is no gross margin in hardware anymore, and none in the perceivable future -- and Intel knows it.
What a bunch of wishful thinking. You think Intel, AMD, and ARM are going to make the same amount of money if they just open sourced all their designs and relied on support? Intel is doing like IBM and other companies: Open sourcing at a limited level while still keeping their core products proprietary.
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That's simply not going to work for companies like Intel. Besides, Intel is still making billions in hardware on a reasonable margin.
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Re:It's competitive. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't prevent AMD benefiting from the useful technology, it just prevents the patents. That's the ideal situation. They're providing an incentive to invent things without the temporary monopoly.
Agreed. I see nothing at all wrong with this restriction.
Given that Intel funded them they could have asked for ownership, but instead asked for Open Sourcing any developments. Good on Intel.
Given that Universities are for the most part funded by government and other public funding sources one could make the case that they should ALL operate this way. Universities are the last entity that should be locking up ideas with patents.
I simply can't get incensed about this. Its a clever way to give back to society something bigger than you have in your own inventory.
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Given that Universities are for the most part funded by government and other public funding sources one could make the case that they should ALL operate this way. Universities are the last entity that should be locking up ideas with patents.
What should happen is the creator/inventor should have a right to any patents as a success incentive, and whoever supplies funding should be entitled to the rest, and name their terms as Intel is doing; universities already get plenty of money for hosting the research
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where do you make this up? Open sourcing enables competitors, like AMD, to get the benefits from the work without needing patents or any form of protection. How backwards are you?
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You are using the words "getting the benefit" as extremely specialized jargon.
(That's the nicest way I can phrase that.)
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Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
This is so wrong I have to ask, are you mentally challenged? First to file does not change rules about publication or who can claim inventions. It only changes the rules covering what happens when two groups attempt to patent the same thing at nearly the same time.
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You are so wrong that I have to ask, are you mentally challenged? You are incorrectly arguing about what you think "should" happen, in direct contradiction to reality. That mak
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This sounded awesome until I was thinking about it...
so does this mean that if a beneficiary invents something cool, they can't patent it, and then intel can?
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But alas, open source and patents are not mutually exclusive. The presence of an open source demonstration of the technology in the patent would only make it possible for some interested third party to later claim that the patent was filed despite prior art that the inventor does not own, and they would then stand a slightly better chance at having the patent invalidated. See also: "Royalty Free Patent" which is a construct aimed at using the patent system to protect against abuse of the patent system, al
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Patent then open source (Score:2)
The summary says they have to open source any resulting software and inventions.
The only way to do this is to patent it and THEN open source it....but this costs money. Since the patent goes to the first to file, even in the US now I believe, this is the only way to do it safely.
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That's, umm, an interesting interpretation of the actual law [loc.gov], which says:
"A person shall be entitled to a patent unless--
`(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date
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Dr Bob's chiro-trolls are better than this.
Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
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It's actually an interesting play.
It has a similar effect as buying an existing patent for "defensive purposes": make it impossible to use that patent against you. In the defensive patent strategy, you're buying up the sword; in this special strategy, you're preventing the sword from even being made.
(For those of you who are a bit metaphor-challenged: the idea being researched is not the sword. The legal threat implicit in patent ownership and defense is the sword.)
Also interesting: the idea that a market p
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A university is free to find funding elsewhere and still file patents.
Just not if they accept any Intel money. In a sense they're selling a bit of their freedom (like you might working for someone who says you can't also work for anyone else. And like that example, it's probably well worth it to do, for most).
I've figured out where my confusion comes from. The root of this for me is a loss of freedom required by Intel, which has me asking "How is that good?" And yet I realize that this move IS good for everybody. Everyone benefits, except maybe it's a step back for "large cor
First to file? (Score:2)
While I like this idea, doesn't it cause problems with first to file?
I just imagine a scenario where a university discovers something, doesn't file a patent, and megacorp comes along and patents it. With first to file, Megacorp gets the patent.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but to me it would seem better that the university file the patent, but not be able to enforce it.
Re:First to file? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:First to file? (Score:5, Informative)
While I like this idea, doesn't it cause problems with first to file?
I just imagine a scenario where a university discovers something, doesn't file a patent, and megacorp comes along and patents it. With first to file, Megacorp gets the patent.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but to me it would seem better that the university file the patent, but not be able to enforce it.
As long as the university publishes their discoveries, there would be demonstrable prior art.
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It doesn't matter if you're first to file if someone publishes the invention in the public domain before you file.
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Unless you're the one publishing it and file within a year.
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Whew, we almost had a situation where a European had to take responsibility for their own government's actions, but fortunately you ably deflected that.
Re:First to file? (Score:4, Informative)
With first to file you still cannot patent anything that has already been published, so as long as the university publishes instead of sitting on the invention then nobody else can come along and file for a patent.
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Ahhhhh ok. This is the piece I was missing. Thanks!
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Given that first action allowances are relatively rare, I would disagree.
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Sure you can. It's not a crime to apply for a patent on something with previous art.
Actually, it can be. When you file a patent, then you must sign a document saying that you have searched the published material for related work and that you are not aware of any prior art. If this statement can be shown to be false, then you have just committed perjury.
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If this statement can be shown to be false, then you have just committed perjury.
They probably won't enforce it
What should happen instead, is congress should pass a law, and set a very steep fine. Require a proof of creditworthiness and ability to pay the fine to obtain the patent.
The patent office should be allowed to make a finding, charge the penalty, and receive the proceeds, if anyone's found patenting something there is prior art for, before or after issuance of the patent.
There should be a sign
They should go for it... (Score:2)
Re:They should go for it... (Score:4, Informative)
For one, they are the only major GPU maker that actually releases open source drivers.
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For two, if you want them to OSS their internal research, you can pay for it.
Intels drivers may be open source (Score:2)
But Nvidias closed source linux drivers are still better.
My preference for awesome open source drivers but if my choice is for awesome binary blobs or sucky open source drivers
ill take binary blobs for $100 alex.
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Reading your post, I'm fairly certain you have no idea how business works.
he difference is they control what their employees do, but not what the kids do. What if the kids in the lab create something "naughty" that gets them sued
The other difference is, they aren't responsible for what the kids do ... because they don't control them. I'm not responsible for what your kids do, even if I give you $50 and you give it to them to buy a gun and shoot people. What world do you live in where someone is responsible for your actions but have no control what so ever over your actions?
I'm more worried about the kids creating "Napster 2012" or equivalent. Intel wants / needs no part of that, thats for sure.
Do you have any idea how much money was made by smart people off of Napster? The onl
Intel is wrong... uh ... wait (Score:4, Insightful)
I like bashing faceless mega corporations as much as the next guy, but this seems to be ... a benign act.
Re:Intel is wrong... uh ... wait (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than that ... it's almost designed to improve the overall state of the art, without Intel gaining exclusive access to the research, thereby making it possible for just anybody to gain from this. I'm outraged.
I mean, that's almost communism. No patents? No royalties? No licensing fees? No lawyers? Just good old fashioned university research opened up for all to see?
Do you realize how badly this could cripple the economy? ;-)
(Kidding aside ... I wonder if the academic journals would muck with this somehow. They take copyright of the papers, for instance.)
I do applaud Intel for this ... when I first read this, I thought the string was they they get the patents. This really is funding open research.
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Intel gets to ensure that they get to use the discoveries causes by the research without having to pay licensing for it.
They're essentially outsourcing brain-storming to universities then take what they come up with and refine it with their own engineers at a cost far lower than what they would need to self invest. It's open source because Intel wants to be able to use the research and there's no way the universities would accept the money and give any inventions that came from it to Intel.
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copyright != patent
While they could lay claim to the paper, they could never claim ownership to what the paper describes.
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I, too, am skeptical. What's in the other hand? Would they be able to patent the tech ex post facto with the 'First To File' rules?
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Correct. Nor does "open-source" mean "you get exclusive rights". Rather the opposite.
The likely rationale for this is that having universities work on problems of Intel's chooseing gives them enough of an early-mover advantage that they don't much care who uses it later.
Makes sense to me (Score:2, Informative)
Awesome (Score:2)
Hope it sticks. Also should result in more of the money going to research instead of being used up on patent fees.
NSF Next? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe this will set a precedent, where all research funded by an external agent has patent clauses attached to them.
Of course, this could swing both ways. Oracle could insist that all patents to research results it funded be assigned to Oracle.
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Because the Bayh-Dole Act [wikipedia.org] was enacted by a Congress (which funds the NSF) that does not agree with you in the the same sense.
Research money has to come from somewhere. It can come from your taxes, it can come from university money, or it can (and does) come from a combination of the two. Universities can make money by charging students fees or by licensing patents to inventions developed by their staff (and student employees). Money made by licensing patents has the advantage of coming from commercial pa
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Research money has to come from somewhere. It can come from your taxes, it can come from university money, or it can (and does) come from a combination of the two.
The entire reason that we fund research is because we believe the knowledge will help advance society. Given that, more widely this knowledge is used, the greater effect it will have and the more it will improve the standard of living. By restricting who can use the knowledge we are artificially decreasing our return on investment for tax-funded research. I would argue that the opportunity cost of doing so far outweighs the money saved by university patent revenue.
It is -- in the same way that a public ampitheater paid for by the people is available "to the people." Not every person has the right to use the stage at any given time,
That is because it is impossible for everyo
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[citation needed]
Congress argues differently. There's a legislative history of debate to support it.
Congress wins.
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Waiting for government to do the same... (Score:2)
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If the university doesn't patent it... (Score:2)
... someone else will. We have a first to file situation here. This is RIDICULOUSLY dumb on Intel's part. A nice sentiment, better executed by stating, "All fruits of this research must be patented by this foundation we've set up, which allows open, free licensing to anybody and everybody." Defensive patents are the only security you have; non-patent clauses just guarantee somebody other than your allies will patent! Ask Google, specifically whomever wrote the $12.1 billion check to acquire defensive patent
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Prior art: look it up.
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Sure. You'd win a legal challenge. If you spent millions litigating it first. And you get a decent judge/jury. A small startup wouldn't stand a prayer, prior art or no. Look at the suits Rambus won with 2 patents that were later invalidated (think it was on /. today). You think those companies are getting their money back? Why take the risk?
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Sure, but why not take all the defensive steps available to you?
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Which devolves into everyone engaging in free-for-all patent blackmail, patenting everyone else's portfolios just to obscure the landscape. Oh, just like it actually is right now.
Here's a hint: the phrase "defensive patent" is best understood in the context of the old rubric, "The best defense is a strong offense."
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Sure. You'd win a legal challenge. If you spent millions litigating it first.
With a prior art in public domain, why should I litigate first? I mean: I already have a proof in the public domain that I discovered that, shouldn't be the burden of the other to demonstrate the validity of its patent in the conditions of prior art?
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Because when somebody sues you, even if there's prior art, you're still litigating. You're still paying your lawyers to prepare your claims, etc. That all takes time and money.
Just because you're right, doesn't mean there won't be a fight. More than half the lawsuits between corporations are settled because one company can't afford to keep up its legal defense.
Re:If the university doesn't patent it... (Score:4, Insightful)
As others have commented, first to file doesn't apply if the research has been made public. Since universities rely on publish or perish, the most likely scenario is that anything produced through Intel funding will be considered prior art when an outside party then tries to patent it. Assuming that the software is GPL'd, then it must include the GPL required headers, etc. So, if somebody does try to usurp it, then the university can sue them for license violations.
What Intel is proposing is how Universities used to operate prior to the 1980s. Somebody did research, presented a paper at a conference, others picked it up and expanded on that research and then presented at another conference, etc., etc. There were no patents and information flowed relatively freely and knowledge expanded. That is how the university system was designed to work.
Come the 1980s and tax law changes, universities focused more on monetarizing their research to fund other things (not necessarily a bad thing), but the way it played out was that the patents were then sold to other companies who then used them to build war chests and limit competition.
Intel is every bit in its right to insist that if you want to use their money for research, these are the stipulations. If a university doesn't like having to make the fruits of the research public and available to all, they are free to use the money from somebody else.
It is interesting to note that the biggest advances in science, at least in the US, came under systems in which the information was freely shared. Since keeping research private and seeking patents, the US has gone from being a leader int he scientific community to a follower. But at least somebody made a bunch of money of them.
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I agree, openness is the point and I applaud Intel for taking that stance. I just think that patenting and putting into an open consortium that anyone could use would be a safer way to do it. Before the 1980s and the era when universities had to fight for survival, things were much less cut-throat. Now, it's everybody for themselves, and I sense that anything you don't explicitly protect is open to attack from all corners. Complicating matters is that in most IP disputes, might (money) makes right.
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As others have commented, first to file doesn't apply if the research has been made public. Since universities rely on publish or perish, the most likely scenario is that anything produced through Intel funding will be considered prior art when an outside party then tries to patent it. Assuming that the software is GPL'd, then it must include the GPL required headers, etc. So, if somebody does try to usurp it, then the university can sue them for license violations.
Plus, open source is the best kind of publication in some respects, because it is a complete disclosure of the exact technique being used. Of course, a patent examiner will rarely have time to dig into source code to figure out if a claim can be rejected on that basis, so it's also important to provide other publication such as a conference or journal article.
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They just changed to a first to file a few weeks ago.
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Nor does it change the fact that patent inspectors are MORONS. I worked in a company that had a patent on a device. Patent issued 1991, device sold commercially beginning 1992. We had a patent on a specific device, that did a task. USPTO granted a patent, in 1995, on the whole IDEA of making a device that could do exactly what our device/patent did, to a patent troll. While we won the lawsuit the troll filed, it cost our small business over $750K to fight it. The CEO, on many occasions, thought to settle fo
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Patent inspectors are morons is unaffected by the change to first-to-file, so why even mention it? Except to get people to waste time by pointing out that it has no effect on this. If you were going for a very subtle troll--you succeeded!
The patents would compete with them (Score:2)
They're probably doing this because universities were selling the patents to companies that would then compete with Intel.
Crowdsourcing universities (Score:2)
Sounds like Intel is basically crowdsourcing the universities for it's research. They can go back and apply for the patents themselves.
Maybe the US government should pay attention (Score:3)
I wish the US government would take a similar approach -- any royalties a university receives should go back to the government in the proportion of the funding provided. If a university payed for research costs with 50% from the government then royalties from the patent should be split 50% with the government. If the government provided 100% funding, then 100% of the royalties should go beck to the government. In doing this, then the government is truly investing in research instead of just paying the bills.
I also would include corporations, too. If the government provides x% of funding for the creation of a new drug, then x% of the profits should come back to the government, since it is the taxpayer that footed the bill in the first place.
The other alternative is what Intel is proposing -- we will pay for the research, but everybody has the right to benefit from it.
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Thank You (Score:2)
WOn't work (Score:2)
Nothing can be open with the incoming patent changes. The new first to file rule means I could file a patent on anything open, and they can't do jack.
I spent several hours learning the expected ramification on the law last weekend. You think it's borken now? ha!
You heard me!
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While first to file is about to become a reality in the US, if the patent is for something that you don't hold a license or copyright for, how can you patent it? Unlike the person sitting at home who develops something and somebody copies it (or even a corporation), Intel states specifically that it needs to be released as open source (which would imply something like GPL). Code under a GPL license doesn't grant the user the right to patent it. Just like if I broke into a research facility and stole thei
Mobile Influence? (Score:2)
What about Intel's appetite for PhD graduates? (Score:2)
Intel's motivation is obvious. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's decided that the advantages of patenting have started to flow less and less to companies like Intel, and more to patent trolls. Intel is not the bad guy here.
Therefore, it is in Intel's interest to fund research in areas it may want to commercialize, and simultaneously preclude patenting by insisting on open publication and no patenting.
In this scenario, the entity with the most money (i.e. somebody like Intel) wins if they have sufficient drive.
More realistically, they want to preclude the people funded by Intel to set up a startup on their own, one whose primary asset is the people and the patent estate. This way Intel can hire them as ordinary employees who are impoverished postdocs instead of having to first buy them out and then hire them.
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And fewer trolls will mean more start ups to buy. They couldn't care less about impoverishing post doc
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Re:I predict (Score:4, Insightful)
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Totally valid concern, and likely one only manageable through the threat of withdrawn funding.
One thing that does concern me is while the drive for open source is laudable and comes with a lot of (however fuzzy) wider economic benefits, universities develop patents and create new companies to spin off. This makes a lot of dough for the institution and births a lot of companies well worth having - they are good, well paid jobs and they drive significant applied science (all the key people involved taking a c
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The practice of universities patenting everything that comes out of their labs is a relatively recent thing, and arguably has decreased the rate that new companies have been created out of university research. Without the patents and with a wide publication of university research, everyone in the world has the potential to benefit from that research, but the team that did the research has the advantage of actually being skilled with the methods and techniques and some or all of them could start a company to
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[With] patent encumbrance, those people need to get the IP from the university or industrial partner before they can start their new company.
Zhengrong Shi is a perfect example, he invented something to do with solar tech while at Sydney university. He wanted to use the tech to spin of a company in Oz but the university sold the patent to a German company. Disheartened by the lack of support he returned to China to start his own company [wikipedia.org]. 10yrs later he is now the richest man in mainland China, but still cannot use his own invention. He does not blame the university, he blames short-sighted politicians, to drive the point home he has donated to th
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Based on my own observations, this story is complete bullshit. Professor Goodnough at UT Austin invented the most practical methods for manufacturing LiFePO4 batteries and two key patents were granted in the late 90s. LiFePO4 is a great battery technology that is very stable and has the right voltages to replace lead-acid batteries. It is considerably more expensive, but there many applications where it would be much more desirable than lead-acid.
UT Austin never really cared about getting the technology
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Maloney_(technology) [wikipedia.org]
The answer was stroke...
However, he's back at work now.