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Submission + - New study suggests patent trolls really are killing startups (arstechnica.com) 1

mpicpp writes: Heavy patent litigation scared off about $22 billion in VC funding over 5 years.

Patent reform advocates have long argued that "patent trolls"—companies that do nothing but sue over patents—are harmful to innovation, not just a plague on big companies. A new study attempted to find out if there's any real data behind that accusation or if it's just a few sad anecdotes.

Turns out there is a very real, and very negative, correlation between patent troll lawsuits and the venture capital funding that startups rely on. A just-released study [PDF] by Catherine Tucker, a professor of marketing at MIT's Sloan School of Business, finds that over the last five years, VC investment "would have likely been $21.772 billion higher... but for litigation brought by frequent litigators."

The study defines "frequent litigators" as companies that file 20 or more patent lawsuits, which limits the definition to true-blue "patent trolls," or Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), the term used by the paper. The study covers the period from 1995 to 2012.

Tucker's paper estimates a 95 percent confidence interval for the amount of lost investment to be between $8.1 billion and $41.8 billion. Those numbers are relative to a baseline of just under $131 billion of investment that actually occurred during that five-year period time.

Comment Re:Let me get this straight (Score 2, Informative) 387

AGW has a straightforward reasoning behind it : 1/ the greenhouse effect of CO2, which you can test for yourself: see youtube. if you have other results, warn the nobel price committee. 2/amount of CO2 released can be estimated as well, by calculating how much oil, coal has been burned the last centuries. this amount is far larger than any removal of forest cutting has been responsible for, and far greater than volcanoes.

Submission + - Can a solar-powered plane fly around the world in 25 days?

stephendavion writes: The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft relies on solar energy to get around and its pilots want to take it on a trip around the world. Weighing over 2,260 kilos (5,000 pounds) and with a wingspan of more than 70 metres (240 feet), Solar Impulse 2 made its maiden flight on June 2, 2014. The aircraft flew for two hours and 17 minutes without complications at a speed of 55.6 km/h, and the test pilot was Markus Scherdel.

Now, following in the footsteps of Phineas Fogg in then iconic book Around the World in 80 Days, pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg plan to take Solar Impulse 2 for a trip around the globe beginning on March 2015.

Will they be able to pull it off? With 17,000 solar cells to power four electric motors and spin the propellers, the pilots say they can do it in 25 days and nights, or 500 hours of flying non-stop.

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