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The American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has released the second part of its research project on the effects of intellectual property protection on scientific research (I reviewed the first part here).
The new AAAS release, International Intellectual Property Experiences: A Report of Four Countries (May 2007) surveyed over 5000 scientists across the US, UK, Germany and Japan. The AAAS finds that intellectual property rights have not hampered scientific research, even in nations where the proliferation of patents has caused concern with some critics. This is a very significant conclusion. In scientific research, intellectual property rights can cover research tools (inputs) as well as the results of research (outputs). Thus intellectual property rights can affect the scientific process itself, rather than simply its product. The context of the research lends weight to the AAAS findings.
A study that includes scientific tools “should produce somewhat higher rates of adverse effects” of intellectual property rights than research on scientific outputs alone. Yet, even in the US, where scientists are more likely than those in other countries to leverage patented technologies in the research process, and file for their own patents, patents have not had the anti-commons effect, or tragedy of the anti-commons, that some predicted. For the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, survey results also suggest that IP protected technologies remain relatively accessible to the broad scientific community, and not as constrained by IP protections as many have cautioned.
… Japan survey results indicated that despite the increasingly pro-IP environment for Japanese university and public sector researchers, there is little evidence that patents are interfering with research… approximately 0.1 percent of our total sample of researchers abandoned a project due to the inability to access a patented technology… less than 1 percent of research projects from our total sample were delayed or had to be modified because of the inability to access others’ patented technology. The AAAS study also dispels notions that university patenting runs contrary to “academic culture.” There appears to be a healthy exchange of intellectual property, especially in the US, with academic institutions providing industry with patented research tools. Unless you’re IBM or Microsoft, and have the bank account to hire academic researchers for a full-scale R&D lab, you can visit a technology transfer office to license research tools.… in the US, academia led industry in patenting the highest percentage of research tools and in out-licensing those tools exclusively, with the majority of those licenses going to industry itself. Although that might provide some support to earlier concerns that academic scientists… might seek financial gain from that work—it also might suggest that when acquiring licenses from academia, industry could be requesting exclusivity to protect its interests in more “downstream” and marketable products. With these positive findings from the AAAS, I’d look to put forth a challenge from Professor Edmund Kitch, with which I introduced the first AAAS report on potential anticommons in scientific research: "Surely by now commentators concerned that the Tragedy of the Anticommons is an actual problem should be able to point to particular patents or the licensing policies of particular patent owners that have slowed progress in the field."
posted by Noel Le @ 9:17 PM | Academia, International, Patents
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