I disagree with your groundless suggestion that partnerships between universities and patent firms are “unseemly” (Nature 501, 471–472; 2013). Such partnerships stand to increase the rewards and level of protection for inventors, which are, after all, the purposes of a patent.

Some critics argue that a university's mission should be to disseminate knowledge — in which case, universities are free simply to publish their inventions without patenting them or to seek a patent and offer a free licence. But others choose to patent their inventions to recoup their research dollars and reward their inventors, as the US Bayh–Dole Act encourages. Companies such as Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, Washington (of which I am founder and vice-chairman), facilitate these choices.

Intellectual Ventures has acquired rights to thousands of university patents and in the past ten years has paid about US$110 million to universities and government researchers, $510 million to independent inventors and more than $720 million to smaller companies. The organization also works with university researchers to launch new businesses. For example, our work with Duke University's Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics in Durham, North Carolina, has produced two spin-off companies that have raised tens of millions in venture capital.

Universities are important engines of innovation and sources of pioneering technology, but they are not designed to file costly, lengthy lawsuits. California's Stanford University fought all the way to the Supreme Court in its infringement suit against Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, only to lose in 2011. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been fighting for years against a company recently adjudged to be a wilful infringer, and that case is going to appeal.

By teaming up with firms that specialize in patent rights, universities have a better chance of reaping the royalties they deserve and focusing on what they do best — education and research.