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Anti-patent diatribe on californiastemcellreport

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The folks in California, like IBM's Kappos, have taken a schizophrenic view of patents: those of my competitor are bad, and mine are good. In a post titled New Stem Cell Patent Ruckus in California, Dave Jensen wrote of an issue involving Stem Cells Inc. of Palo Alto, Ca.:

The situation reminds us of a book, "Science Business," by Harvard business professor Gary Pisano, published a couple of years ago. He has studied and consulted with the biotech industry for decades and has written about its consistent lack of profits. He suggests that part of the problem lies in the "monetization of IP" and inappropriate application of high tech industry IP principles in the biotech industry.

In 2006, he said in an interview on the Harvard Business School web site:

"Science and business work differently. They have different cultures, values, and norms. For instance, science holds methods sacred; business cherishes results. Science should be about openness; business is about secrecy. Science demands validity; business requires utility. So, the tensions are deep.
"What has happened is that we have tried to mash these two worlds together in biotech and may not be doing either very well. Science could be suffering and business certainly is suffering. If you try to take something that is science, and then jam it into normal business institutions, it just doesn't work that well for either science or business."

LBE's comment-->

When one sees text -- Science should be about openness; business is about secrecy. --, one wonders if the author (or the person citing) understand what the word "patent" (as distinct from latent) means. Patents are about public disclosure, not about secrecy.
Patents co-exist with, and do not impede, scientific
publication. See
WHAT THE STORY OF THE INVENTION OF THE TRANSISTOR TEACHES US
ABOUT 21ST CENTURY PATENT PRACTICE published in 8 JMRIPL 80 (2008). Journals like the Harvard Business Review teach things like "plagiarize with pride," a Hobbsian view of the world. From the April 2004 issue: Softball competitors like to think that their bright ideas are sacred. But hardball players know better. They're willing to steal any good idea Simpson's credibility on Bayh-Dole is suspect, because he has manifested a lack of understanding of facts in the area.

***To link this to another theme

The IAM blog has a post titled To get the press to take the IP world seriously, the IP world must take the press seriously which includes text:

If journalists do not get IP and report it badly - or not in the way IP professionals would like (sometimes the two are not the same) - I would argue that it is because those inside IP do not make it accessible enough.(...)To get journalists to take IP seriously, you need to explain it to them in a way that they will understand, find interesting and relevant to their readerships.

Long ago, LBE tried to publish in Harvard Business Review an article responsive to "plagiarize with pride." HBR wasn't interested. Long before LBE wrote JPTOS, pp. 743-746 (Sept. 2006), LBE contacted Eli Kintisch, but Kintisch said his article in the July 28, 2006 issue of Science was correct, even though it wasn't.

The issue is not about explaining "in a way they will understand"; the issue is about journalists who are already partisans.

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).