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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

How universities aid and abet patent trolls.

A few weeks ago, administrators at Penn State University did something they believed had never been attempted in American academia: The school put about 70 engineering patents up for auction and tried to sell them to the highest bidder. They weren't so successful-not many patents sold-but the project has disturbing implications. What if all this intellectual property, based on research done at a public institution, were to end up in the hands of someone less interested in innovation than in hauling companies to court ? What if Penn State auctioned its inventions to a greedy patent troll ?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/history_o f_innovation/2014/05/patent_trolls_universities_so metimes_look_a_lot_like_trolls.single.html [slate.com]

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