Session 460 on New Models of Intellectual Property - Days 1 & 2 Wrap Up

Global, Local, Open, and Closed Innovation Systems: How Can These Divergent Paths Merge?

While I will leave the finer points of the debate for the hallways, this blog is designed to serve as a forum to pose key questions, emphasize important takeaways, and advance the dialogue and action on emerging models of intellectual property.

Note: Italicized questions are those of the blogger not the aforementioned presenter. Nonetheless, anyone may use them to his/her intellectual benefit or detriment.

Douglas Graham, executive director of Open Innovation Society, woke us up this morning to the extent of locked up economic value in organizations. To liberate these potentially innovative resources, he proposed an open IT-based platform where innovators, managers, and the public can collaborate in a secure environment.

Open innovation models are less expensive—or even free—compared to closed systems. How does one design an open global, national, and/or corporate system that protects individual innovators as much as our current intellectual property legal regime?

Given that open-source cannot be mandated, how do we tweak our current system to benefit all the divergent players?

Joseph Straus of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition, and Tax Law discussed the need for patents and the benefits that have been accrued by some countries since the World Trade Organization consented to TRIPS (Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

Gary Litman from the United States Chamber of Commerce elucidated that intellectual property is essentially the innovator's communication a) to the public that he has something new to share at a price and b) to the government that he/she has the right for that particular innovation not to be violated.

Innovative products may be able to get ‘us’ out from the current financial downturn in contrast to the financial innovations that contributed to the economic crisis. How can future IP legislation promote global cooperation given the existing non-transparency of most innovation systems?

With the costs of complying with IP laws so high, what is the impact of large organizations monopolizing innovation? Are we chiseling away at entrepreneurship in exchange for managing system-wide predictability?

Meanwhile, John Vaughn amplified the possible tensions between the core mission of a university and adhering to and benefiting from intellectual property. He also brought up the contrasting goals of the IT and pharmaceutical sector.

To borrow from the current climate change discourse: Can we have common but differentiated innovation policies for different sectors? For different countries?

The day’s sessions ended with two concrete solutions; one from the Human Genome Project set forth by Tim Hubbard, and the other by Johnson Kong of ip.com. Both advocated for the tremendous net benefits of open access publishing.

Till Tomorrow,
Doug Horn
-Rapporteur