4 ms·

Why do people get to patent the products of federal grants?

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Because federal grants don't require exclusivity.
jcranmer 7y ago
Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention merely because he's funded by the government? Do note that, in these situations, you have to notify the government of your intent to file a patent (and you lose the patent if you fail to do so!), and the government gets an automatic license to the patent.
- dclowd9901 7y ago
  Because it was in the public’s interest to fund them and the public should reap the benefits. It should be “open”. I know this is largely a philosophical difference of view, but let me ask you: why should the public fund anything if it doesn’t do anything to benefit the public?
  - mbreese 7y ago
    Patent rights exist because they benefit the public. A patent is a grant of a monopoly of an invention for a limited amount of time. After the patent expires, then the public is free to use the invention. I get what you're saying, but states typically operate on a different time-scale. So, long-term the public definitely benefits. They also benefit in the short term by having access to an invention -- in this case a pigment -- that didn't exist before. The government gets an automatic license to that patent, so there is also that benefit that the government doesn't end up paying for the invention multiple times. The counter argument to your question is: why should I work to invent something if I can't benefit from it? I believe that the concept of the patent is a decent compromise between the two points of view. I don't think that the question of who does the initial funding is necessarily as important. And the Bayh-Dole act was specifically written as an effort to encourage more federally funded research to be made commercially available to the public. Before Bayh-Dole, this compound may have been academically interesting, been researched, published, but then left on the shelf for many years before someone found a commercial use for it. Now, trying to find a commercial use is actively encouraged (or required depending on which tech-transfer office you're talking to). The thinking behind this is that an invention that is available in the market (even patent-protected) is better than an invention that is sitting on the shelf in a lab. Eventually the patent protection runs out and the public gets an even better benefit. But you're right that it's a trade-off.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      Why should I work to pay taxes if I don't benefit from it?
    - ranie93 7y ago
      >Patent rights exist because they benefit the public. I don't see how your following statements support this claim. Specifically in the short term, you say that the patent provides access to an invention (through the company or whoever will sell the invention). Is this necessarily the case? >[...] but then left on the shelf for many years before someone found a commercial use for it It doesn't seem clear to me how the ability for something to be privately patented suddenly makes it accessible to the public. If government funded research discovered this pigment, then DuPont can still benefit from the process-- they'd just have to pay royalties to the government (i.e. the taxpayers) whose money gave rise to the invention in the first place. "[...]state influences on innovation and technological developments within the private sector using Apple as an example, for the way they popularized the government created technologies of GPS navigation, touch screen technology, and voice recognition into the modern smartphone. She also gives the example of how the US National Science Foundation funded the algorithm which helped create Google's search engine. Mazzucato argues that the private sector makes up the last and least risky part of technological innovation and entrepreneurship." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
      - mbreese 7y ago
        > Specifically in the short term, you say that the patent provides access to an invention (through the company or whoever will sell the invention). Is this necessarily the case? It is not necessarily the case that a patent will lead to a commercially available product. But, a patent is a public document. At the end of the protected time period, the invention described by the patent is available for the public to use. If the patent didn't exist, the secrets behind an invention would be hidden from the public. But, this comes with a risk for the company in question... if someone else figured out your secret (independently), then you would have no protections and your secret could then be used by this new competitor. A patent is a defense against this. An inventor agrees to make their secrets public, in exchange for a time-limited monopoly to their invention. Both parties gain something. The public gets to know how something works -- and the rights to use this knowledge for free in the future. The inventor gets a short-term monopoly on this IP and immediate protection from competitors to make money. > It doesn't seem clear to me how the ability for something to be privately patented suddenly makes it accessible to the public. Because the institution (normally a University) now has a motive to market this invention. Before Bayh-Dole, something like this pigment would have been noted in a lab notebook and maybe the bright blue color would have been mentioned in a journal article. But, because the University can now use this IP to license the pigment commercially, there is a motive to pull this IP off the shelf at the lab and into the market. > If government funded research discovered this pigment, then DuPont can still benefit from the process-- they'd just have to pay royalties to the government (i.e. the taxpayers) whose money gave rise to the invention in the first place. Which would you rather handle the licensing of the IP for this new pigment? A large federal bureaucracy, which is now on the hook for managing the IP for all government grants, and really doesn't have any strong motivation to market the IP? Or the University which stands to make a lot of money to help fund their research and academic missions? One of those entities is more motivated to get this invention licensed and (hopefully) available to the public. Again, Bayh-Dole was designed specifically for this purpose -- to move the gatekeepers of government funded research away from the federal government and out to the institutions that had more motivation to push these discoveries to the public faster. I haven't read the The Entrepreneurial State, but the opening synopsis on Wikipedia supports this logic. > book written by Mariana Mazzucato which argues that the United States' economic success is a result of public and state funded investments in innovation and technology, rather than a result of the small state, free market doctrine that often receives credit for the country's strong economy. (from the Wikipedia page) A key driver behind the US economy has been public and state funded research. The mechanism that this research makes it to the broader market (faster) is by moving the licensing away from the federal government and towards the research institutions.
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  >Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention merely because he's funded by the government? Same reason the company i work for owns any code I write while I'm on the clock.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  > Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention "Rights" to inventions aren't innate, they're explicitly granted. Why should we grant an exclusive monopoly on publicly funded research?
  - mbreese 7y ago
    To add a profit motive, which in effect accelerates the fruits of the research being made available to the public and not hidden on the shelf of a lab. At least, that's the theory...
- pjc50 7y ago
  Everywhere I've ever worked claimed patent rights over anything I invented.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Tax money doesn't come from the government, any more than a politicians power comes from the government. It comes from the people. It ought to serve the people, not the recipients.
- anbop 7y ago
  I’m funded by my employer and my parents are assigned to and owned by them. Why isn’t this analogous?
  - ar0 7y ago
    I just hope this is a typo... ;)
    - zeristor 7y ago
      Sounds like Worryfree from 'Sorry to Bother you', strange to think that film is utopian in that unskilled labour isn't replaced by robots
      - ujoh1 7y ago
        Hello See how you can make a steady passive incomes of $100 daily on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details
mbreese 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act This is the act that makes this all possible and actually encourages this practice.
peteretep 7y ago
Presumably because it keeps the profits in the country that funded it?
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  No it doesn't - the patent can be read by anyone, and if someone in China wants to duplicate your invention they can. This just stops other people who paid the taxes that funded the work from getting it without paying more for a long time.
Majromax 7y ago
> Why do people get to patent the products of federal grants? A few reasons: * The core hypothesis behind publicly-funded research is that simply advancing knowledge is a good thing. Patents (versus public domain, versus assigning a patent to the government) can change who benefits to what degree, but the raw public good is still there. * Government grants often don't fully fund a research project, or interesting research happens as a byproduct of another 'core' project. That happened here -- undoubtedly the original grant said nothing about finding new dyes. * Research grants don't fund all the steps to commercialization, they just fund "basic" research. Paradoxically, denying IP rights to funded research might stifle commercialization by making it not worth the effort to turn a lab development into a commercially-viable product. This is similar to the idea that old drugs and traditional remedies are under-studied in part because pharmaceutical companies cannot patent (and thus profit from) associated discoveries.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Also: * Patents expire, eventually, in a more reasonable timeframe than, say, copyrights.
njharman 7y ago
Patents themselves are federal grants. They are the government giving you a monopoly and enforcing it. If you don't think people should profit from the governments efforts to promote science, cats already out the bag and run round corner down the alley.

Because federal grants don't require exclusivity.

Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention merely because he's funded by the government? Do note that, in these situations, you have to notify the government of your intent to file a patent (and you lose the patent if you fail to do so!), and the government gets an automatic license to the patent.

dclowd9901 7y ago
Because it was in the public’s interest to fund them and the public should reap the benefits. It should be “open”. I know this is largely a philosophical difference of view, but let me ask you: why should the public fund anything if it doesn’t do anything to benefit the public?
- mbreese 7y ago
  Patent rights exist because they benefit the public. A patent is a grant of a monopoly of an invention for a limited amount of time. After the patent expires, then the public is free to use the invention. I get what you're saying, but states typically operate on a different time-scale. So, long-term the public definitely benefits. They also benefit in the short term by having access to an invention -- in this case a pigment -- that didn't exist before. The government gets an automatic license to that patent, so there is also that benefit that the government doesn't end up paying for the invention multiple times. The counter argument to your question is: why should I work to invent something if I can't benefit from it? I believe that the concept of the patent is a decent compromise between the two points of view. I don't think that the question of who does the initial funding is necessarily as important. And the Bayh-Dole act was specifically written as an effort to encourage more federally funded research to be made commercially available to the public. Before Bayh-Dole, this compound may have been academically interesting, been researched, published, but then left on the shelf for many years before someone found a commercial use for it. Now, trying to find a commercial use is actively encouraged (or required depending on which tech-transfer office you're talking to). The thinking behind this is that an invention that is available in the market (even patent-protected) is better than an invention that is sitting on the shelf in a lab. Eventually the patent protection runs out and the public gets an even better benefit. But you're right that it's a trade-off.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Why should I work to pay taxes if I don't benefit from it?
  - ranie93 7y ago
    >Patent rights exist because they benefit the public. I don't see how your following statements support this claim. Specifically in the short term, you say that the patent provides access to an invention (through the company or whoever will sell the invention). Is this necessarily the case? >[...] but then left on the shelf for many years before someone found a commercial use for it It doesn't seem clear to me how the ability for something to be privately patented suddenly makes it accessible to the public. If government funded research discovered this pigment, then DuPont can still benefit from the process-- they'd just have to pay royalties to the government (i.e. the taxpayers) whose money gave rise to the invention in the first place. "[...]state influences on innovation and technological developments within the private sector using Apple as an example, for the way they popularized the government created technologies of GPS navigation, touch screen technology, and voice recognition into the modern smartphone. She also gives the example of how the US National Science Foundation funded the algorithm which helped create Google's search engine. Mazzucato argues that the private sector makes up the last and least risky part of technological innovation and entrepreneurship." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
    - mbreese 7y ago
      > Specifically in the short term, you say that the patent provides access to an invention (through the company or whoever will sell the invention). Is this necessarily the case? It is not necessarily the case that a patent will lead to a commercially available product. But, a patent is a public document. At the end of the protected time period, the invention described by the patent is available for the public to use. If the patent didn't exist, the secrets behind an invention would be hidden from the public. But, this comes with a risk for the company in question... if someone else figured out your secret (independently), then you would have no protections and your secret could then be used by this new competitor. A patent is a defense against this. An inventor agrees to make their secrets public, in exchange for a time-limited monopoly to their invention. Both parties gain something. The public gets to know how something works -- and the rights to use this knowledge for free in the future. The inventor gets a short-term monopoly on this IP and immediate protection from competitors to make money. > It doesn't seem clear to me how the ability for something to be privately patented suddenly makes it accessible to the public. Because the institution (normally a University) now has a motive to market this invention. Before Bayh-Dole, something like this pigment would have been noted in a lab notebook and maybe the bright blue color would have been mentioned in a journal article. But, because the University can now use this IP to license the pigment commercially, there is a motive to pull this IP off the shelf at the lab and into the market. > If government funded research discovered this pigment, then DuPont can still benefit from the process-- they'd just have to pay royalties to the government (i.e. the taxpayers) whose money gave rise to the invention in the first place. Which would you rather handle the licensing of the IP for this new pigment? A large federal bureaucracy, which is now on the hook for managing the IP for all government grants, and really doesn't have any strong motivation to market the IP? Or the University which stands to make a lot of money to help fund their research and academic missions? One of those entities is more motivated to get this invention licensed and (hopefully) available to the public. Again, Bayh-Dole was designed specifically for this purpose -- to move the gatekeepers of government funded research away from the federal government and out to the institutions that had more motivation to push these discoveries to the public faster. I haven't read the The Entrepreneurial State, but the opening synopsis on Wikipedia supports this logic. > book written by Mariana Mazzucato which argues that the United States' economic success is a result of public and state funded investments in innovation and technology, rather than a result of the small state, free market doctrine that often receives credit for the country's strong economy. (from the Wikipedia page) A key driver behind the US economy has been public and state funded research. The mechanism that this research makes it to the broader market (faster) is by moving the licensing away from the federal government and towards the research institutions.
pastor_elm 7y ago
>Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention merely because he's funded by the government? Same reason the company i work for owns any code I write while I'm on the clock.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
> Why should you deprive an inventor of the rights to his invention "Rights" to inventions aren't innate, they're explicitly granted. Why should we grant an exclusive monopoly on publicly funded research?
- mbreese 7y ago
  To add a profit motive, which in effect accelerates the fruits of the research being made available to the public and not hidden on the shelf of a lab. At least, that's the theory...
pjc50 7y ago
Everywhere I've ever worked claimed patent rights over anything I invented.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
Tax money doesn't come from the government, any more than a politicians power comes from the government. It comes from the people. It ought to serve the people, not the recipients.
anbop 7y ago
I’m funded by my employer and my parents are assigned to and owned by them. Why isn’t this analogous?
- ar0 7y ago
  I just hope this is a typo... ;)
  - zeristor 7y ago
    Sounds like Worryfree from 'Sorry to Bother you', strange to think that film is utopian in that unskilled labour isn't replaced by robots
    - ujoh1 7y ago
      Hello See how you can make a steady passive incomes of $100 daily on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details

mbreese 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act This is the act that makes this all possible and actually encourages this practice.

peteretep 7y ago

Presumably because it keeps the profits in the country that funded it?

TallGuyShort 7y ago
No it doesn't - the patent can be read by anyone, and if someone in China wants to duplicate your invention they can. This just stops other people who paid the taxes that funded the work from getting it without paying more for a long time.

Majromax 7y ago

> Why do people get to patent the products of federal grants? A few reasons: * The core hypothesis behind publicly-funded research is that simply advancing knowledge is a good thing. Patents (versus public domain, versus assigning a patent to the government) can change who benefits to what degree, but the raw public good is still there. * Government grants often don't fully fund a research project, or interesting research happens as a byproduct of another 'core' project. That happened here -- undoubtedly the original grant said nothing about finding new dyes. * Research grants don't fund all the steps to commercialization, they just fund "basic" research. Paradoxically, denying IP rights to funded research might stifle commercialization by making it not worth the effort to turn a lab development into a commercially-viable product. This is similar to the idea that old drugs and traditional remedies are under-studied in part because pharmaceutical companies cannot patent (and thus profit from) associated discoveries.

kazinator 7y ago
Also: * Patents expire, eventually, in a more reasonable timeframe than, say, copyrights.

njharman 7y ago

Patents themselves are federal grants. They are the government giving you a monopoly and enforcing it. If you don't think people should profit from the governments efforts to promote science, cats already out the bag and run round corner down the alley.