Intellectual Property and the Academic Enterprise

The essence of the modern academic enterprise lies in the belief that research results should be promptly published and that academic researchers should have unfettered access to research results and data. Nonetheless, since the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, U.S. universities have become enterprises in a different sense, seeking intellectual property exclusivity, especially patents. Current controversies involve gene sequence patenting standards and database legislation. Although concerns over an anticommons fail to consider cross-licensing solutions, and legislative compromise over database protection may be forthcoming, the tension between the two concepts of the academic enterprise is best understood as an illustration of the fundamental intellectual property trade-off between incentives for innovation and access to innovations. That trade-off is complicated by difficulty in distinguishing basic from applied research in fields such as biotechnology due to the speed with which basic research leads to new products and by the public goods aspect of such basic research.