ABSTRACT

A key element of current attempts to commercialise and commodify science is the increasing strength and prevalence of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in standard research practices, both in industry and in academia. For the appropriation of scientific knowledge for private economic gain depends entirely upon legally enforceable property rights, especially in the case of codified knowledge that approximates the characteristics of a ‘public good’, and so is almost impossible to withhold from non-paying customers without the support of the law. With a social goal of maximising knowledge production, however, the cumulative nature of these processes entails that a balance must be struck between sufficient incentives for the production of knowledge and reciprocal incentives or obligations for its public dissemination and disclosure. Accordingly, IPRs may be more properly described as ‘intellectual monopoly privileges’ (IMPs) (Drahos and Braithwaite 2002), i.e. temporary monopolies over intangible assets granted by a state in exchange for various forms of public disclosure and access. Accordingly, we will use the latter terminology in this chapter.