« Just the Sobig.F that matters | Main | British Columbia drought leading to catastrophe »
Latest Stories
- Quote du Jour: Vonnegut
- Traveling, Jobs Report
- Geithner Gives Best Explanation in Senate Hearing Today
- Quote du Jour: Value?! Value?
- It's Matt Drudge's World. We Just Blog in It.
August 23, 2003
One argument why university IP should be free
From Brad DeLong's site:John Quiggin: Patently right: There's an interesting piece in today's Fin (subscription required) about Uni of NSW Vice-Chancellor Rory Hume, who says universities should give away (nearly all) the research they produce rather trying to make money out of intellectual property. I think he's right for a number of reasons. First, despite some impressions to the contrary, the returns to universities from commercialising research have been very poor, even in the US where this has been going on for a long time. The Australian Research Council did a study on this and found that the returns from commercialisation were about 2 per cent of the cost of research. In fact, if unis fully costed their commercialisation outfits, including land and administrative overheads, I suspect that the true figure would be negative. Second there's the standard public good argument. The social benefits are greater if the results are free to use.
Third, the university's intellectual "property" has already been bought and paid for--by the donors in the case of a private university, and by the citizens in the case of a public university.
[Brad Delong]
Digg it
Bookmark it
Stumble it
