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Costs, Norms, And Inertia: Avoiding An Anticommons For Proprietary Research Tools, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Book Chapters

A decade ago the scientific community was sounding alann bells about the impact of intellectual property on the ability of scientists to do their work. Protracted negotiations over access to patented mice and genes, scientific databases, and tangible research materials all pointed toward the same conclusion: that intellectual property claims were undennining traditional sharing norms to the detriment of science. Michael Heller and I highlighted one dimension of this concern: that too many intellectual property rights in 'upstream' research results could paradoxically restrict 'downstream' research and product development by making it too costly and burdensome to collect all the necessary …