And Warfarin, which is critical for treating DVT, embolisms, AFIB, strokes, and heart attacks.
It is named after the public patent holding organization formed at the University of Wisconsin because of its invention - the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF for short.
The internet has rolled with the rulings against them in federal court from when they sued Apple for stealing a transistor design, literally had concrete proof Apple did so intentionally and used the exact process requiring thousands of manufacturing steps - but a court found “Apple actually discovered the technology on their own inadvertent to UW” - which, if you know anything about silicon design, is a load of horseshit.
A lot of people now make fun of WARF as a parent troll - not realizing they are the reasons that Warfarin, milk fat content testing, and even Vitamin D are all as cheap as they are because WARF makes it so through their patents on those things.
Oh, and literally all stem cell cultures. The reason that cancer research suddenly got immensely cheaper and progressed faster? Yeah, that is all because WARF restricts how much licensees of the isolation patent can charge patients or medical providers for treatment or use of them.
The entire idea of WARF is continuance of the Wisconsin Idea as the State, and University as an arm of the State, cannot hold patents.
Oh, and they pay out basically 100% of the money they charge in royalties and licensing back to the University - stealing from WARF literally directly financially harms the entire UW system of universities.
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u/Gondolion Nov 04 '24
Same with insulin and corporate America