Re: The Crap Shooter
Posted: February 19th, 2010, 6:00 am
But why hate the stuff when you can ENJOY it?
But I digress. On to my rant...
Right now I'm working on a research and development project sponsored half by the university, half by the government, on the area of wireless computer networks (of course, something way more specific, but I won't bore you with the details) with collaboration from another university in Spain. They were working on a protocol, same as us, but using a different base protocol to see which one worked better. To lay it out on layman's terms, it's kind of like using different soils for the same seeds and seeing in which soil the plants grow better. The protocol we were using as base is patented, which I didn't like from the beginning, but a lawyer took a quick (and i mean QUICK) look at it and said it was OK to use, so the project leader ignored my complaints. Now, 8 months into the project, with only 4 more before the contract ends, we found out that the patent holders aren't allowing academic use of their protocol. Bummer. When I went to talk with the lawyer that had gave us the OK before, it turned out that she had absolutely no idea how software patents are handled; she had only worked with patents related to physical inventions and stuff like that. Things that you can touch, unlike software. So now I'm stuck on explaining to her the idea behind patenting an idea (yes, I know it sounds redundant) that's not bonded to a specific piece of hardware while the university's law department looks for a way out of this problem that won't mean asking for an extension on the contract... or losing all these past months of hard work...
But I digress. On to my rant...
Right now I'm working on a research and development project sponsored half by the university, half by the government, on the area of wireless computer networks (of course, something way more specific, but I won't bore you with the details) with collaboration from another university in Spain. They were working on a protocol, same as us, but using a different base protocol to see which one worked better. To lay it out on layman's terms, it's kind of like using different soils for the same seeds and seeing in which soil the plants grow better. The protocol we were using as base is patented, which I didn't like from the beginning, but a lawyer took a quick (and i mean QUICK) look at it and said it was OK to use, so the project leader ignored my complaints. Now, 8 months into the project, with only 4 more before the contract ends, we found out that the patent holders aren't allowing academic use of their protocol. Bummer. When I went to talk with the lawyer that had gave us the OK before, it turned out that she had absolutely no idea how software patents are handled; she had only worked with patents related to physical inventions and stuff like that. Things that you can touch, unlike software. So now I'm stuck on explaining to her the idea behind patenting an idea (yes, I know it sounds redundant) that's not bonded to a specific piece of hardware while the university's law department looks for a way out of this problem that won't mean asking for an extension on the contract... or losing all these past months of hard work...
