14 May
2025
14 May
'25
7:16 p.m.
On 5/14/25 07:54, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 09:33:36AM -0400, Theodore
Ts'o wrote:
I started at Sun after you left, and don't know when they started but
patent bonuses were common in the 2000's at Sun. They paid up to
$2000/person, with a max of $6000/team, when a patent was filed.
(Based on a 2004 slide deck encouraging us to file more patents,
I never got one to verify. They did emphasize they wanted patents for
defensive reasons, including cross-licensing deals, not to attack other
companies.)
-alan-
It's a lot more than that, though. I was at
IBM at that time, and at
IBM, right about then the bonus for getting for getting published at a
conference had gotten eliminated. It was very clear that as far as
IBM management was concerned, conference publication didn't matter.
If you filed a patent, you would get paid a cash bonus. If you submit
to any conference --- you wouldn't.
That's wild. To the best of my knowledge, Sun didn't give you a bonus
for either a paper or a patent, it was just part of the job.