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2. Intellectual-Property Issues in Biological Research
Pages 5-14

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From page 5...
... They believe that science will advance most rapidly if researchers enjoy free access to prior knowledge. In contrast, the working assumption behind intellectual-property law is that exclusive rights promote technology because without the promise of exclusivity, incentives to invest in research and development would be inadequate.
From page 6...
... In industrial research, it is fairly uncontroversial that patents promote greater disclosure of research results than would the absence of patent rights. That is less clear in academic research, which would otherwise presumably be freely disclosed (rather than maintained as a trade secret)
From page 7...
... For some uses of patented inventions in research, the theoretical conflict between the scientific imperative for free access to prior discoveries and the commercial imperative for restricting access to those discoveries might make little practical difference. Such uses include ones that either do not come to the attention of patentholders or, for whatever reason, do not provoke their objection.
From page 8...
... patent law, although some narrow exemptions are available in some contexts. Many judicial decisions have stated that the unlicensed use of patented inventions in pure research does not constitute patent infringement, but almost no decisions have found that this exemption applies to the facts of the cases in question.
From page 9...
... It was designed as an independent, nonprofit organization to manage patents arising from academic research (including the starter patent that Catrell himself had obtained on an electrical method of recovering valuable materials from smokestack emissions) and ultimately to use the income from such patents held by the Research Corporation for grants in aid of university research.
From page 10...
... The foundation declined to license his process to the oleomargarine industry, but it did license the process to the Quaker Oats Company for use with cereals and to several other firms for the manufacture of concentrated vitamin D oil. However, commercial patenting was not the norm in universities between the late nineteenth century and World War II.
From page 11...
... However, the financial pressures that led so many universities to flirt with commercialization during the Depression eased during and after World War II as the federal government began to supply universities with abundant funds for scientific research and training. Federal policy on commercializing government-funded research varied from agency to agency, but generally it discouraged patenting for private gain, especially in types of work fundamental to national security, such as atomic energy.
From page 12...
... Thus, although in the postwar era scores of universities had established the means to patent the results of university research, the procedures served mainly to regulate the use of the patents rather than to earn substantial income. Many universities turned their patents over to the Research Corporation, not wanting to be bothered with administering or enforcing them, or they assigned the patents to independent entities modeled after WARP.
From page 13...
... All that counted was that it conform to the fundamental patent law in language written by Thomas Jefferson in 1793-that one can get a patent for anything that is made by humans and is a "manufacture or new composition of matter." With that broad directive from the Supreme Court, the PTO quickly expanded the categories of living subject matter that it considered eligible for patent protection. In 1985, the office held that corn plants were eligible for standard utility patents as opposed to the more limited plant-variety protection for which they had been eligible previously.
From page 14...
... 14 Sharing Laboratory Resource thereafter, the commissioner of patents issued a notice stating that the office now considered nonnaturally occurring, nonhuman, multicellular living organisms, including animals, to be patentable subject matter.


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