I worked for a start up that was spun out thanks to an exclusive license to the technology the founder developed at a university lab, and then supported with SBIR money. I agree with the article that these types of arrangements are on the whole a good thing. The company failed but without that license we wouldn’t have had a chance, large companies would have no reason to partner with us if they could have the tech for free, or we might have been sued into submission by some of the more trolly companies in the space.
Making the results of U.S.-funded research exploitable without license by foreign entities is also very unpopular. That is one reason the U.S. does not have a public domain mandate of the kind you propose.
I would personally be open to your suggestion that the government should take an ownership percentage in return for its funding. I don't think this has been seriously proposed, but it has interesting implications.
But wouldn't that create a big conflict of interest?
WidgetCorp is 10% owned by the Feds, InterWidget is not. Who gets the contract for those $6M widgets in the new fighter jet?
If the stake was owned by any of the relevant institutions then that might play a role, since it could contribute in some way to the institution's budget perhaps.
But it's an interesting idea. If the government were to take a percentage in return for funding, there could be an explicit goal of getting out of the position with X times return in less than Y years. X might not have to be particularly large, the goal would only be to cover losses and inflation.
The "R" in SBIR is research. By the end of govt funding (phase II), the company is supposed to commercialize it on their own. The money maxes out around $1M, for producing a prototype only.
Compared to private equity, it's only angel-investment-sized funding, but for a high-risk project that requires research to demonstrate so angel investment will not suffice. It is not ready to launch after govt funding.
Presumably we wish to incentivize invention. But the idea that the taxpayers should own a significant share of what they pay for has merit.
Public domain is interesting because it arguably benefits the rest of the world more than the originating country.
I could understand benefits equally, but how does it benefit other countries more than originating country?
It's technically true but I find it to be another unfortunate example of "us" vs "them"
Having the capability to invent seems way more powerful than having access to inventions
[0]See every news article about how the latest research out of Misc. U is going to revolutionize lithium batteries, vs. the number of actual revolutions in lithium ion batteries.
We courted partners and investors, went to trade shows etc. The idea is out there. If anyone wants it bad enough they could contact my old boss and his university to figure out how to license it. Otherwise they can wait 4-5 years and have at it. Giving the IP to someone who deeply understands it and wants to bring it to market is a worthwhile goal in my opinion, even if it its not always attainable.
Maybe, but I don't care at this point what the purported intent was. Reality is, it failed and made things much worse. The whole patent system, at this point, serves mainly as a barrier for small companies to enter the market. The best thing that could be done with it is to burn it to the ground.
Looks like arbitrary rent-seeking and random intellectual piracy to me. A cover for barratry as an income stream.
Fuck IP and fuck lawyers.
Almost... I think there is a subtle difference in what the intent was/is.
The point of the patent system is to incentivize inventors to make their creations available to the public. The time-limited monopoly to their invention (the patent) is the incentive. But you need to make enough details public to get the patent so that someone else can also take advantage of the invention. This is the public benefit... eventually, the public has access to an invention.
So, yes, the idea is to give companies a head start to commercialize an idea, but that's not the reason in and of itself. The reason is to make the invention available to the public, so that the public can benefit from the invention. And after a few years, it will be freely available. The limited monopoly is a financial incentive to keep the company working on the idea. Yes, it's a barrier to competitors, but it's also a potential reward for developing the idea.
In your case, I think the system worked (and Bayh-Dole in general works). Even though the company ultimately failed, the company had an incentive to try and commercialize the invention. This could have benefited the public by having access to a product that didn't exist before. But, even if the company fails in the market, after a certain amount of time, the public still has the patented information.
Really, the idea behind Bayh-Dole (which created these University-based IP systems) was to get inventions and data out of universities and into the public-domain. Otherwise, there would be billions in research that would be sitting on a shelf somewhere, or mentioned in a paper, but never used to benefit the public. Without that patent incentive, would your company ever have been formed? Would the research ever been commercialized? Likely not.
But I don't think it would be better if we didn't have patents at all. So many things are currently protected by trade secrets and not disclosed. Imagine if it were all kept secret... I don't think that would benefit the public interest. And that was the original goal -- benefiting the public.
I disagree that this was originally or should be currently the sole goal of the patent system. The purpose of patents is "to promote the progress of useful arts". As in, the patent system should assist in making the invention useful, public, and widely available. The patent system should not exist to promote the individual interests of companies, though that might be a necessary side effect.
Frankly, the idea that an invention should remain behind a paywall even though it is no longer being developed or commercialized does not seem like a good system to me. It seems like a system designed to protect the patent holder over the public.
If we're paying for it under the justification of "Science is good for the country" then it should enter in the public domain.
If we're paying for it because "We want to invest in small businesses" then it should be the property of the business.
Programs will need to choose to apply for the kind of grant that makes sense for what they're doing.
This is just my perspective from researching SBIR grants, which are generally $100,000 - $250,000. This is enough to fund a component of a project or get started, but this deceiving large amount really isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
It would be interesting to isolate projects where taxpayer dollars constitute a majority of the funding and go from there.
Those journals “peer review” and provide a quality bar for the content. The government didn’t cover the journal cost but instead covered the research cost.
Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas.
There's nothing preventing the fruits of research from being commercialised just because that research has been made public domain.
> Your asking for the government to additionally have its own scientific publication journal that is free. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best of ideas.
There is already a similar requirement for NIH grants. Research produced with NIH grants has to be made available on PubMed Central.
Not saying it’s right but the system I believe is currently WAI.
I would say in almost all cases the foundational approach/IP has not been taken forward. New IP was developed, which was more suitable for building a commercial product.
I'd actually be interested in any examples where university IP has successfully been taken forward (particularly in Biotech).
Mostly the universities provide effectively training, and a background of scientific techniques which can help build companies... but specific IP... not so much.
"Money driven" suggests that is the primary motivation, although I'm not sure that is what you meant: I think that's fairly rare in academia. Money is a consideration for most academics, but prestige generally is a much more important driver.