Making scientific information proprietary may quash innovation, a survey of genes discovered during the last decade concludes. The analysis found that genes discovered by the biotechnology company Celera — and protected as intellectual property for up to two years — were less likely to be studied by researchers and the developers of drugs and diagnostic tests than were genes that remained in the public domain.
Protecting intellectual property, whether through patents or licensing agreements, encourages private companies to invest time, energy and money in research that might never otherwise get done, the thinking goes.
“Generally speaking, the principle behind the intellectual property system is supposed to further public welfare,” says bioethicist Mildred Cho of Stanford University, who was not involved in the study.
But some analyses suggest that the financial hurdles and negotiations required by licensing agreements are off-putting, stifling academic research and innovation, and slowing the development of new tools and medicines.
The new analysis examined research and development on human genes that were cataloged by public and private genome-sequencing efforts beginning in the 1990s. Celera, a private company, was the first to decode the string of letters of some genes; other genes were first unraveled by the Human Genome Project, a government-sponsored sequencing effort.