The four-month dispute between the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Sony and Toshiba over technology developed by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley and Engineering Professor John Perepezko was settled out of court Wednesday.
In dispute was a \diffusion barrier,"" a part of a computer chip used in Playstation 2 that prevents silicon from interfering with the conductivity of copper.
""It is analogous to an aluminum balloon. The aluminum works as a transport barrier, and retains helium better than a latex balloon,"" said Andy Cohn, spokesperson for WARF.
The barrier is one half of a micron, 140 times thinner than a human hair. It enables the more than 70 million Playstation 2 consoles to quickly process their intense graphics.
Cohn said details of the agreement are private and will not be released.
UW-Madison Law School Associate Dean and Professor John Kidwell said such agreements are common.
""Parties involved within disputes don't want to give information to other litigants in other cases,"" Kidwell said. ""It is similar to a company hiring you and [publicly] disclosing your pay-that salary would become the minimum for others.""
Perepezko said lawyers complicate disputes on patents and intellectual property that can be more easily solved out of court.
""When lawyers get involved black becomes gray ... they try to find subtle differences which they claim are major exceptions,"" he said.
Cohn said settling the case out of court is preferable.
""It's a lot cheaper, and if we can achieve what we want through negotiation that's a whole lot better for the company and the university. Why pay lawyers when you can come to a negotiated agreement?"" Cohn said.
According to Cohn, there are approximately 1,000 licenses and 1,700 patents resulting from work done in the UW System. Legal actions to enforce patents are rare, he said.
Most often, Perepezko said, WARF publicizes the system's work to companies, making them aware of licensing and patents. In addition, these companies may offer research grants and receive rights to license a developing technology. However, sometimes companies use the technology without realizing it.
""They didn't realize there was a patent and now they are paying for their errors,"" Perepezko said.
However, Perepezko and Wiley will see little of the settlement, Perepezko said.
""If you hear it's a multimillion-dollar settlement, that doesn't mean I'm a multimillionaire. WARF gets all the costs of negotiations ... [such as] a special laboratory, recognized by people in the industry to take [the chip] apart and see the atom structure,"" he said.
Profits from licensing and settlements, Cohn said, will go to the university and support a number of UW System projects and the UW-Madison Graduate School.
""This means that even the [Graduate School's] humanities will benefit,"" Perepezko said.
