Boston University's patent infringement suit against Apple — one of eight identical claims the school has filed against electronics companies in recent months — is just the latest example of an aggressive new push by colleges to not only protect their intellectual property, but also bring in more cash.
"We've definitely seen a step up in university patent lawsuits," said Mark Lemley, a patent expert at Stanford University Law School. "Universities have been cash-strapped in the last several years with the economic downturn, and this looks like a good source of revenue. They're also looking around and everyone else is doing it."
The "wake-up call" for universities, Lemley said, may have come in December when a jury awarded Carnegie Mellon University an astonishing $1.2 billion in a patent lawsuit against Marvell Technology Group and Marvell Semiconductor Inc.
"You can imagine university administrators facing a budget crisis pointing to Carnegie Mellon and saying, 'If their patent is worth a billion, surely ours is worth something,' " Lemley said.
Some universities have waited until just before their patents expire — once they're already widely adopted — to sue companies that have used them, said Arti Rai, a Duke University law professor.
"They maintain patents and then realize they made no money off them — never licensed them — and then the way to make money at the very end is by suing," she said.
Rai wrote a paper studying the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which sued 92 firms about a decade ago, just six months before the patent for a color imaging method was set to expire. The suits brought mixed results, with some being dismissed, others settled and still others ruled in the university's favor, she said.
The Herald reported yesterday that Boston University filed a suit against Apple claiming the company ripped off a computer engineering professor's patented electronic semiconductor and used it in the iPhone 5, iPad and MacBook Air.
BU has also filed seven identical lawsuits against companies including electronics giants Amazon and Samsung.
BU declined to comment. Apple did not return a phone call and email seeking comment.
Meanwhile, MIT has launched a number of still-pending patent battles, including a May 2012 suit against Ossur HF over an elastic actuator used in the company's "Power Knee," a prosthesis for above-knee amputees. That suit is in mediation.
The university also sued Shire Regenerative Medicine in January, alleging infringement over Dermagraft, which is used to treat diabetic foot ulcers.
MIT declined to comment. But Andrew Beckerman-Rodau, an intellectual property law expert at Suffolk University, defended the schools, saying, "Universities have ... stopped just giving everything away."
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