Comment Its the motivation... (Score 2) 438
I work at Columbia University in one of these groups Katz appears to be talking about. We have had revenue generating copyrighted and patented material in my department since 1993, so this is nothing new. The only thing that's new is the amount of money being collected.
Most of the point of this article is irrelevant, though, and betray's Jon's lack of perspective on this idea of money-making. Most scientists toil in obscurity for years, and their work is never recognized by anyone outside of a small clique of their peers. It is a rare project indeed that is funded based on it's potential to make money.
On a three-year grant, most projects create no usable output for 2 years and 10 months. It is only in the last two months that anything remotely resembling a marketable idea/commodity/process is generated. And once the project is completed, who cares if the university sells it for money?! That only generates more cash flow into the institution to fund more new research! That is much better than relying on the whims of institutions like the NSF, NEA or NEH, which are subject to political influences, as we should all well know.
Until and unless there is a large portion of research undertaken solely based on it's potential profitibility (and I strongly assert this is not the case now), universities are well within their bounds of intellectual property creators to feel entitled to profit from their investments.
And since the market only pays for things which are useful (arguable point?), the university is only going to profit from things that benefit a large number of people, after all...
Most of the point of this article is irrelevant, though, and betray's Jon's lack of perspective on this idea of money-making. Most scientists toil in obscurity for years, and their work is never recognized by anyone outside of a small clique of their peers. It is a rare project indeed that is funded based on it's potential to make money.
On a three-year grant, most projects create no usable output for 2 years and 10 months. It is only in the last two months that anything remotely resembling a marketable idea/commodity/process is generated. And once the project is completed, who cares if the university sells it for money?! That only generates more cash flow into the institution to fund more new research! That is much better than relying on the whims of institutions like the NSF, NEA or NEH, which are subject to political influences, as we should all well know.
Until and unless there is a large portion of research undertaken solely based on it's potential profitibility (and I strongly assert this is not the case now), universities are well within their bounds of intellectual property creators to feel entitled to profit from their investments.
And since the market only pays for things which are useful (arguable point?), the university is only going to profit from things that benefit a large number of people, after all...
