OPENNESS For all innovation efforts, there are quite important issues concerning openness, and the hazards of enclosures of science and the hoarding of knowledge. A number of academics writers, patent professionals and R&D experts have called attention to the potential risks that innovation inducement prizes might lead to less sharing of knowledge, as people position themselves to win prizes. But this risk should be seen in a broader context. It is also often pointed out that patents can discourage upstream research and downstream product development. Government grant programs that encourage the privatisation of publicly funded R&D (like the US Bayh-Dole Act) can also move things in the wrong direction. It turns out this whole important topic is complicated. One area to pay attention to are the “Bayh-Dole” issues relating to prizes. In many of the US government funded prizes, and in the early X-prize designs, all of the intellectual property rights go to the recipient of the prizes. In some non-medical cases in the US, the government is barred from asking for licenses to use the inventions that win the prizes — an even worse outcome than for patents developed under federal grants, which are subject to (rarely used [fn1]) royalty free government licenses, and march-in and access requirements. So one debate is about obtaining the right bundle of rights in patents or data from prize winners, and managing also the disclosures. After a series of workshops on medical innovation inducement prizes, proposals also emerged to include new “open source dividends,” which involve sharing of prize money to entities that openly share access to knowledge, materials and technology. The open source dividends were modeled in several of the 2008 Bolivia Barbados prize proposals, and have unfortunately been ignored by some of those who have commented on those proposals. There are also much more transformation proposals for funding open source medicine, including the proposals to introduce “competitive intermediaries” that have as t

Motion: that existing copyright laws do more harm than good

In EE Times: Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike, I noted an op-ed by Rick Merritt in EETimes, "Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike." A Mr. J. C. Cooper, of Pixel Instruments Corp., replied with a letter to the editor in defense of the patent system. My reply is reprinted below:

a recent report by Hefce (Higher Education Funding Council for England) which summarises the financial performance of English Universities, showed that a 22% increase in funding in IP protection (to over £20M) had led to a 1% increase in income. Note — income, not profit.