Universities have formed a company that looks a lot like a patent troll

With 15 universities now forming a consortium to license electronics and software patents, it's going to be a mess for innovators and lead to worse, more expensive products. Despite the explosion in university patenting and the growth of technology transfer offices, the great majority of universities lose money on their patents. This new university patent licensing company won't be getting any of the small number of impressive revenue-producing patents. The university LLC won't engage in the type of patent licensing that most actual university spinoffs would want, which are typically exclusive licenses over patents that give it a product or service no one else has. This is the same model pursued by the notorious Intellectual Ventures, a large patent troll company that convinced 61 different universities to contribute at least 470 different patents to its patent pool. To be clear, universities aren't patent trolls. That broader social mission is exactly why universities shouldn't go off and form a patent-holding company that is designed to operate similarly to a patent troll.