Property and the pursuit of knowledge: IPR issues affecting scientific research

The origins of this special issue lie in the international Workshop, Digital Collaboration Technologies, the Organisation of Scientific Work and the Economics of Knowledge Access, which was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, 3–5 December 1999. During that Workshop, it became apparent that there was tension between the advances in information and communications technologies that were facilitating more spontaneous, ‘bottom up’ organization and conduct of scientific research collaborations on a global scale, and the effects of international trends in the extension and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) protections affecting scientific and technical data and information. Sometime following this Workshop, it was decided to organize two journal symposia: one that would focus on collaboration research is the potential and actual conflict that arises on the boundary between research conducted in public and non-profit institutions (including universities), and research performed by firms and individuals in the private sector. The research findings of the former tend to be revealed rapidly, disseminated widely and (until lately) freely, whereas the information gained through private sector R&D is selectively disclosed and, when it is disclosed (however incompletely), its use typically remains restricted by one or another form of intellectual property right protection. Baldly stated, we have two distinctive regimes or environments for the conduct of research: the actors in the realm of ‘open science research’ expect reciprocal sharing of discoveries among themselves and the rest of the world, while those in the world of private profit-oriented and proprietary R&D expect to receive technologies and the economics of collaborative research in general, and a second that would address the theme of the impact of IPR on scientific research involving public research organizations. After soliciting revisions and extensions of a selected number of the IIASA Workshop presentations on the latter theme, the editors of this symposium became aware that much new and interesting empirical work was underway that was shedding significant light on the topic. As a result, both the dimensions of the symposium, and the length of time to bring the larger group of invited papers to completion, increased payment for the right to use their inventions (and to pay others for the use of theirs). It is therefore not surprising that exchanges across the boundary between the two are sometimes difficult to negotiate, and also that the boundary itself may move depending on the availability of public funding (or private patronage) to support research in the ‘open science mode’, as well as shifts that may occur in the opportunities for direct commercial exploitation of the research results produced in one sphere or the other. Institutional policy changes during the past quarter beyond the original intentions. Yet, we believe readers of this special issue will share our view that the extra efforts entailed have been rewarded by the high quali t p a t