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Category Archives: Freedom
Seven key documents frame university invention management
Seven documents frame university management of inventions: Cottrell, The Research Corporation, an Experiment in Public Administration of Patent Rights (1912) Bush, Science the Endless Frontier (1945) Palmer, Survey of University Patent Policies (multiple editions from 1948 to 1962) Kennedy, Statement of … Continue reading
Say so long to your abusive patent policy
Let’s be blunt. The compulsory, comprehensive, portfolio approach to university invention management is a disaster. It has a rate of 0.1% to 0.5% producing new products. It is 100x less effective than the approach it displaced. When you try to … Continue reading
Vannevar Bush’s seductive lie
At The New Atlantis, Dan Sarewitz has published an interesting article, “Saving Science.” While there’s plenty to discuss regarding his major theme, that scientists “must come out of the lab into the real world,” here I’d like to deal with a … Continue reading
The Purpose of the Patent System for University Research
There is a general argument that the patent is a pretty useful cultural tool to stimulate and reward technological innovation. The owner of a patent has the right to exclude others from practicing (making, having made, using, selling, offering for … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, Commons, Freedom, History, Policy, Social Science, Technology Transfer
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Dual selectivity or dual monopoly? What’ll it be?
Archie Palmer’s surveys of university patent policies make clear that most universities for a long time did not have a patent policy, and when they did write a policy, often it recorded ad hoc practices–for the vast majority of universities, … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, History, Innovation, Policy, Technology Transfer
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Patent policy as norming myth, with antidotes
Among those developing university patent policies, Archie Palmer was the Johnny Appleseed, publishing surveys and discussions of university patent policies for over three decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. Palmer argued that it was important that universities have patent … Continue reading
Compel them to come in
The Christian religion became political when Constantine decriminalized Christianity (313) and Theodorus later made it the state religion (380). At that point, the ad hoc development of beliefs and founding texts became a matter of official business–the norming myths required … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, History, Policy, Social Science
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Dealing with Norming Myths
There’s a new study out at Future Internet that looks at how Wikipedia’s norms have developed over the years. In “The Evolution of Wikipedia’s Norm Network,” Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo examine Wikipedia’s form of governance and find it to … Continue reading
Academic freedom, autonomy, and patrons
Paul Feyerabend, in the next to last essay of Farewell To Reason, responds to some of his critics, who state that they “believe in the autonomy of art, thought, and feeling over money.” Feyerabend is characteristically incisive in his reply. … Continue reading
Look, It's a Thrush!
One of the biggest problems in dealing with university technology transfer is the propensity for people to reason from the names given to things, rather than what the things are. In biology, a truism is that one cannot reason from … Continue reading
Posted in Bad Science, Bayh-Dole, Freedom, Policy
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