The funny thing is that we're not the first nation to try an IP-based strategy towards monetizing its scientific know-how. Post-World-War-II Britain had all so

The funny thing is that we're not the first nation to try an IP-based strategy towards monetizing its scientific know-how. Post-World-War-II Britain had all sorts of stuff going on: the first passenger jet aircraft (the de Havilland Comet), lots of early computer work (the Manchester group in particular invented index registers and the most reliable RAM technology before core; the LEO was the first machine actually used by a business), and even Watson, Crick, and Rosalind Franklin doing DNA. But rather than trying to foster businesses built around these innovations, the government instead pursued a strategy of trying to monetize licenses for them. There's a book from MIT Press which describes how this went in the computer field in particular. It's a very dry read, but it's one of these things where the title tells the tale: "Innovating for Failure". MIT Press page here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=6166&ttype=2 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=6166&#3...