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Yet golden rice was made mostly through state funding - patents aren't the only way.
by deogeo 7y ago
Yet golden rice was made mostly through state funding - patents aren't the only way.
- makomk 7y agoOne of the slightly unfortunate things about golden rice (and there are quite a lot of them) is that the state funding it was developed with required them to patent it and sell the patent to the private sector. Though not patenting it would've been of limited help due to the thicket of patents covering the technologies they used.
- rndgermandude 7y agoWhy were they required to patent it and sell the patent?
- makomk 7y agoI think the organization funding it (which if I recall correctly was the EU) wanted the university research they were funding to turn into commercial products, and so set a blanket rule requring patenting and attempts at commercial licensing. This is a fairly common view on government-funded research these days unfortunately. There was a published report by the main researcher somewhere with more details.
- mcv 7y agoWell, that was a stupid idea, then. Instead of selling the patents of public research to private monopolies, they should have made them available to everybody.
- throwaway2048 7y agodeveloped and then sold to a private rent seeking party, don't forget that detail.
- davidf18 7y agoI never said patents are the only way. Patents are very important for wealth creation and for the innovations that we see today. Not an opinion, but fact based on my knowledge on the history of wealth creation.
- refurb 7y agoThere is nothing stopping them from doing the same for other uses. Yet, they don’t.