Intellectual property rights

Work in progress ...

Have you heard about the knowledge economy? Some economists and policy makers got convinced at some point in time that it was better for the western world to focus on so-called high-value activities, such as the design of new products, and shift manufacturing to China and other developing countries. The argument was that we can lower the cost of goods by shifting production where labour is cheap. Western companies could preserve their access to the market through an intentional intellectual property regime, enforced by strong treaties, i.e. exclusive rights to commercialize a given technology granted and guaranteed by a legal and judicial system. Thus, producing intellectual property became paramount, and pressure was put on Universities to turn science into patents and spin-ofs in order to protect the economic supremacy of the west. Various mechanisms were put in place within the academic institution and stronger interfaces were created between academia and the private sector, often supported by government grants to incentivize public-private partnerships. During this period the University became directly subsumed to the economy, as innovation became the new gold.

If you are a faculty member, a postdoc fellow, a graduate student or a technician, and you invent something relevant to your field while working at the University, using the University’s resources (lab, instruments, consumables, funding, etc.) you'll feel a lot of pressure to file for a patent. Perhaps your first contact outside of your lab or department will be the local tech transfer office, a body within the University designed to identify and vacuum out all the new knowledge that shows commercial potential. The pressure is presented as for your own good, sold as a dream of financial freedom if a large corporation will, eventually, license your technology. It sometimes comes as an appeal to your altruistic values: get the tech out there to a company so that they can spread these goods globally, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of your invention. You may also be offered to create a spin-off company based on your technology. In most cases, your University will be your partner and will probably own the majority of the commercial rights. In any case, behind the promises to get you rich or spread the benefits of your invention there is something more sinister going on.

I had a very bad experience with the patenting process, with the University of Sherbrooke, where I graduated, and I realized that the institution had way too much power over me, the researcher. In my opinion, what is considered common practice in the academic environment is unfair, unethical, and even counter productive. How can we understand this? Is there something that we can do about it?

What about making EVERYTHING that comes out of Universities creative commons or open source? After all, we all pay for it, with our tax money. If the University owns it, or the biggest part of it, a corporation will own it. How about returning the University to its original role of creating universal knowledge, detached from political and economic agendas? Here you'll find some of my writings on open science.

The University is an instrument of power

First of all, we need to understand the ultimate purpose of the University? I thought that it was to produce new knowledge to be benefit the entire society. But this is only a naive opinion. If this was the case, the University’s main focus would be maintaining a stimulating and creative environment. The secondary focus would be to insure that new knowledge is successfully passed to society. We are talking here about an institution of knowledge and communications. But in reality, Universities are instruments of power. Who’s power? Who’s controlling these institutions? What is the place of the researcher and the student in all this? What is the real ration between you, your University and its masters? Is there something that you can do about it?

Protection vs openness

Knowledge is power, and power drives history. During antiquity, knowledge was maintained secret because it was used by the ruling class to maintain its power over the rest of the population, and it provided an advantage over the enemy. As a side note, enemies are actors that threaten the ruling class first and foremost. The elite indoctrinates the rest of the population into believing that they are enemies of the nation, to convince people to fight and to repeal these jealous contenders to its own wealth. In any case, ancient societies possessed mechanisms of production, accumulation and transmission of knowledge, but only the social upper class had access to education. At the end of the dark ages knowledge was freed. This didn’t happen by an act of gratefulness from the ruling class, it was rather forced by the introduction of new technologies that facilitated the spread of knowledge, the printing press. Knowledge started to leak into the masses, and as more and more individuals started to take part in knowledge activities a new phenomenon emerged. It soon become manifest that in these conditions of knowledge effervescence creativity increased exponentially, translating into new technologies, which lead to greater military and economic power for the host society.

The key idea here is that in a context of low creativity and low rate of innovation it makes sense to keep knowledge secret. I call this the protection regime. In order to maintain social stability and an advantage over the enemy, the elite is better off keeping knowledge secret. Something different happens when a critical number of individuals take part in knowledge activities, possessing effective means of communication and collaboration: transparency becomes a better strategy to increase power.

Over protection of ideas reduces the speed of generation of new ideas and hinders innovation. On the other hand, transparency lets the the enemy (or competitor) access your new knowledge, which may change the balance of power. Transparency becomes the wise choice only when a society possesses the ability to generate a stream of innovation that puts it constantly in the lead, far ahead of the enemy. From a slow changing regime where protection is the name of the game, the world has transitioned into an accelerating technological race, where speed is the strategy for survival. That happened because a new information technology (the printing press) changed the economic environment Today, a dominant society is determined by its speed of innovation and its translation into various incarnations of power: market domination, military might, etc.. New institutions were created to support this regime, which could only be sustained if the circulation of knowledge in society was increased.

How is knowledge managed?

During the Age of Enlightenment, knowledge was liberated, access to education became widespread, BUT knowledge management became more refined. Not all knowledge was released indiscriminately. In other words, because knowledge is power, the management and allocation of knowledge must follow the rationale of social regime stability, market domination, military might, or other derivatives of power.

In the era of state antagonism, the military had first access to new knowledge. Whatever was considered not useful to increase military power was transferred to other important centers of power. Only when knowledge became obsolete by new developments was it transferred to the civil society. Nowadays, in the era of globalism, inter-state antagonism is disappearing. States are melting into a pot of transnational institutions. State military is also merging into multi-national coalitions, with the role of maintaining the socioeconomic order within a certain region/continent, in order to insure the stability and supremacy of a global elite. Knowledge is still passed in priority to military and other "security" institutions, but increasingly these institutions outsource their activities to corporations and other private institutions, which must also have first access to new cutting edge knowledge. As the world social and economical order is changing, the centers of power are also changing. No matter what the world is becoming, no matter how it is changing, the same rationale is applied to new knowledge. It is managed to insure greater stability of the elite in its rapport with the rest of the population, and to insures supremacy over the enemy. The problem is that as the world is becoming interdependent state enemies are becoming very scarce. Therefore, knowledge is increasingly used to maintain social order, which means to maintain, and even to increase the power of the emerging global elite over the “global citizen”. Everyone working in academia must become aware of the ultimate use of the knowledge we produce.

On the other hand, in capitalist societies knowledge also means economical power, which is ultimately transferred into social power. Thus, applied knowledge becomes the first and most important resource for corporations. In order to enhance the transfer of knowledge into innovation, governments have decided to regulate ideas that can materialize as a product or a service. Yes, the intellectual property concept, embodied by the patent, was first introduced to stimulate creative minds to put their projects into practice, by giving inventors a protection, guaranteeing them a temporary monopoly for their new product/service. At the beginning of this regime Universities were producing mostly scientific knowledge. The application of scientific knowledge were the business of engineers, working independently or for different governmental and private organizations. So, in this regime, most of the knowledge produced by universities was released publicly, in specialized scientific publications. Progressively, Universities increased their activities in applied science and engineering.

The economy takes over the University

Universities have become merely tools of power and this shouldn't surprise you. Just look at the funding structure, which makes Universities run. Most of the funding for research still comes from governments. These funds are distributed to different fields of research according to a list of priorities. These priorities have nothing to do with science in itself. They are based on forecasts, and the goal is to help a particular society/social order make its place into the future. Science is a very complex activity, and these planners are aware of the fact that some of the funding must go into other branches of science which are not considered first priority, but are nevertheless necessary to be maintained in order to insure the well-functioning of the entire scientific institution. There is a fine balance between funding what is considered immediately necessary and funding the rest of science, which is in most of cases not very well understood nor well respected. As a consequence, in a world of short-term thinking, over-planning of scientific development and tight control through funding and other incentives leads to poor scientific development.

The Bayh–Dole Act in the US led to the creation of tech transfer offices in almost every university and new knowledge with technical value was enclosed as IP on a massive scale. Also, research became more and more driven by funding agencies. As publishing got more and more centralized, certain beliefs got reinforced and marginal beliefs got pushed aside. Governments subsumed scientific research to economic development and created policies to instrumentalize science.

In relation with biotech and big pharma you can hear: "there is no research for cures, all research is directed towards lifelong treatments, because this is where the money is."

Politics takes over the University

Many voices part of the intellectual dark web criticize the political corruption of the scientific institution. You hear "in the US the left has taken over universities, censuring professors and speakers." In essence, political divisions has caused a trust and legitimacy crisis for science that is similar to the 16th century reformation.

To be continued...

Further readings

• Tech transfer, Open Innovation, IP and Academia Making the case for Open Innovation

• more to come...