From Chomsky on Intellectual Property:

Once the corporations gain the benefit of the public paying the costs and taking the risks, they want to monopolize the profit.  And the intellectual property rights, they’re not for small inventors.  In fact the people doing the work in the corporations, they don’t get anything out of it, like a dollar if they invent something.  It’s the corporate tyrannies that are making the profits, and they want to guarantee them.

Now specifically in response to academic and public institutions:

The whole thing is set up to socialize cost and risk to the general public, and then within that context, yeah in your biology lab you can invent something.  But I don’t think universities should patent it.  They should be working for the public good.

Bringing the discussion to socializing risks and privatizing profits is a reality in many sectors, most notably finance, but on a larger scale it underlies the debates concerning the tragedy of the commons and global warming.  In this case,  if you take a government grant, that’s public money.  I see it optimistically as a tangible form of collaboration and action at a large scale.  If you’re going to take that money, it only makes sense that any products developed should go back to the people who paid for it, the public, instead of closing them off.  This way, a developed idea can be turned into a platform many can use, providing for tons of jobs.  Think beyond simply a product, think of a business ecosystem.

Of course patents are far more complicated, and I’m open to many perspectives.  I like this one in particular because it pointed to systemic asymmetries between institutional and individual gains, and leads to a reasoning that encourages government funding to create platforms to grow more ideas.

Posted on March 21st, 2011 under Blog. Tags: adjacent possible, chomsky, funding, patents, research