Universities own researchers' IP & control the patenting of federally-funded research innovations. But this might be stifling creativity and productivity instead of accelerating it.
The topic is not really that complicated, we are just focusing on the wrong issue. Patents and IP shouldn't exist at all in the first place!
Just think for a second, the only purpose they serve is "making a profit for the holder", and since that is their only use, they are likely to be abused (think about how many things we pay way more than needed, even though their inventors are long gone; or think about the effort and paperwork and money wasted just to navigate the IP and patent field in order to determine what is available and who you must pay to use some concept). It's basically the closest thing to a "thought police" we have - you are forbidden to use your own ideas because someone owns them. How do you own an idea? It is deeply inhuman to operate in such a way, it is demoralising enough as a researcher to not own any rights to your own published work (which you created, formated, checked for errors, and paid for publication). As long as we treat scientists as children, unable to control their own fruits of labor, real scientific innovation will be slow. If everyone is focused on making things the market currently wants, innovations will be non-existent, since markets aren't aware of innovative solutions.
In every other profession, you own your work UNTIL you sell it. Only in science you never have any ownership over your work. That is fundamentally unfair and has to change. Entrepreneurship is also not the answer, since scientific research and business operate on the opposite logic, so good scientists can never be good business owners. No quick and easx fixes here, we must reset the entire field, and it will be a long struggle.
I believe it is important to differentiate between commercial rights and authorship. In most employment contracts, whether in academia or industry, the employee signs away the right to commercial use of any IP generated as part of the employment. This seems fair to me, because the employer will have to fund the costs involved. This may include fees for filing patents in various countries, which can get very expensive. Often, it is difficult to predict whether such patents will ever make any money (e.g., who would have thought of COVID 2005?)- in fact most don't. Nevertheless, offering employees who are the original inventors a decent share of potential future revenues as motivation is something every employer should consider.
The topic is not really that complicated, we are just focusing on the wrong issue. Patents and IP shouldn't exist at all in the first place!
Just think for a second, the only purpose they serve is "making a profit for the holder", and since that is their only use, they are likely to be abused (think about how many things we pay way more than needed, even though their inventors are long gone; or think about the effort and paperwork and money wasted just to navigate the IP and patent field in order to determine what is available and who you must pay to use some concept). It's basically the closest thing to a "thought police" we have - you are forbidden to use your own ideas because someone owns them. How do you own an idea? It is deeply inhuman to operate in such a way, it is demoralising enough as a researcher to not own any rights to your own published work (which you created, formated, checked for errors, and paid for publication). As long as we treat scientists as children, unable to control their own fruits of labor, real scientific innovation will be slow. If everyone is focused on making things the market currently wants, innovations will be non-existent, since markets aren't aware of innovative solutions.
In every other profession, you own your work UNTIL you sell it. Only in science you never have any ownership over your work. That is fundamentally unfair and has to change. Entrepreneurship is also not the answer, since scientific research and business operate on the opposite logic, so good scientists can never be good business owners. No quick and easx fixes here, we must reset the entire field, and it will be a long struggle.
I believe it is important to differentiate between commercial rights and authorship. In most employment contracts, whether in academia or industry, the employee signs away the right to commercial use of any IP generated as part of the employment. This seems fair to me, because the employer will have to fund the costs involved. This may include fees for filing patents in various countries, which can get very expensive. Often, it is difficult to predict whether such patents will ever make any money (e.g., who would have thought of COVID 2005?)- in fact most don't. Nevertheless, offering employees who are the original inventors a decent share of potential future revenues as motivation is something every employer should consider.
Authorship, by contrast, should be handled for patents in the same way as for scientific publications in the ICMJE guidelines (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html). Furthermore, I think the right to be named as author is something that cannot be signed away in a contract, at least in European law, but I would be interested in comment from someone with real expertise in these matters.