Fighting the "Tragedy of Anticommons" in Science

by rrusczyk, Dec 9, 2008, 5:23 PM

Here's an interesting brief video from some people who are trying to find solutions to managing intellectual property as it pertains to science.

I think this is a fairly difficult problem without any easy answers. There's a small, but loud, minority who will argue that intellectual property basically shouldn't exist. I disagree -- I think a world without IP will be a world in which advances are dramatically slowed. But I don't have a good solution to the problem created by "too much IP", a state of affairs in which so many discoveries are "owned" that it is hard to use them for anything. That said, I have faith that mechanisms will be developed to unleash their potential. It won't happen as fast as if all IP rights disappeared tomorrow, but if all IP rights disappeared tomorrow, I think the rate of future advances would be dramatically curtailed. I think it's a very tough balancing act, and I'm not convinced we're at a markedly sub-optimal equilibrium. (In other words, I'm not convinced that the current system has some dire structural flaws that aren't gradually being worked out.)

economics

science

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I think this is an excellent topic to be discussed. Maybe you should also be posting it to the round table. Though I do not have an answer.

But at least some academics put most their papers online and put a notice along the following lines:

"Copyright Notice: The publishers hold the copyright of these articles. The PDFs are provided here to ensure rapid dissemination of scholarly work. It is understood that you will use them only in a manner consistent with the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law. You may not distribute them or use them for any commercial enterprise."

These days to have access to the (latest) research results you need to be affiliated with a leading university or corporation, otherwise there is no way to pay all these subscription fees to different research journals etc. Some of them charge ridiculous fees of like $\$[/dollar]$ 25 for a paper, say length 15 pages. Your local university library might have some materials but that's about it.

I agree with the fact to make commercial research worthwile you need to have the opportunity to claim patents for the latest breakthroughs in medical and pharmaceutical applications and drugs which may cost 100s of million dollars and are possibly to no avail eventually.

Some economists also argue for which price these vital drugs should be sold with respect to developing countries (DC). If they are sold at a highly discounted level to DCs you may save lifes there but First World (FW) people will be angry because they have to pay more, even possibly outrageous sums comparably, they hardly can afford themselves. But offering discounted products for FW people as well pharmaceutical companies may not be able to break even in terms of their given business model.

But within the computing industry there is also a discussion going on about software patents. Big corporations may trade each others patents to avoid legal conflicts. But for start-ups these things can quickly turn out be an entry barrier into business. In this context it was also discussed whether certain "trivial" things can be patented.

by orl, Dec 9, 2008, 8:56 PM