The dispute over whether genes should be patented (or whether it is even legal to patent them) is typical of a wider debate. Researchers, open-source software designers, technology-transfer offices and entrepreneurs tend to fall into one of two camps with opposing opinions over whether patents, and intellectual-property rights over scientific findings, are ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Recent research in economics paints a far more complex picture. It suggests that scientific progress is not held up by intellectual-property rights per se but by the short-sighted ways in which these rights are often managed. It is time for scientists, universities and, in particular, funding agencies to start acting on such findings.
They use a Harvard/Dupont deal to make thier point:
Another set of studies involving patents owned by Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the US chemicals company DuPont3, 4 demonstrates how shifts in governance can enhance scientific and technological progress. In the 1990s, DuPont required academics and researchers working for other companies to sign complex licensing agreements to use or develop two technologies used in mouse genetic engineering — the company’s Cre-lox recombinant technology and the OncoMouse (a mouse strain modified to carry a cancer-causing gene developed at Harvard and exclusively licensed to DuPont).
Harold Varmus, then director of the US National Institutes of Health, established an agreement with DuPont in the late 1990s that changed how the company’s patents were managed5. Clear, simple licensing guidelines, and low-cost access to the mice enhanced follow-on research and prompted a burst of activity in novel areas. Mice strains derived from these technologies were cited at a 30% higher rate over expected levels for several years after the policy change4.