Cnet reports that Harvard University has reached an exclusive licensing deal with a nano-tech startup. The school will license 50 current/pending patents to a commercial nano-tech firm called Nano-Terra. Patents involved in the Harvard/ Nano-Terra partnership include those that “cover methods of manipulating matter at the nanometer and micron scales to create novel surfaces and combinations of materials.”

Harvard has long accommodated patenting and technology transfer in its academic mission and culture. A passage from the 1977-1978 Harvard Univ. President’s Report reads: "…patents do not conflict with…open access to knowledge…the exclusive rights do not extend to knowledge of a discovery…but only to its… commercial purposes..."

Even former President Bok, a long-time patent/tech transfer skeptic, is described as newly “optimistic about the value of the profit motive in enhancing the university's efforts to fulfill its mission…that application of business principles of efficiency, quality improvement, and profit incentives [benefits]... research and teaching.”

The Free Culture Movement has yet to retort with how “open source nano-technology” obviates Harvard’s patents and the new academic-industry collaboration; nor have any arm-chair innovators made the smart-alecky argument that the Harvard patents are oh-so-obvious to them.

posted by Noel Le @ 7:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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