Sharing the fruits of science
Patents and licenses have served the scientific community for generations, but an emerging movement called “open science” says we need to broaden our thinking about intellectual property for the good of humanity – and the good of science.
I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” wrote Sir Isaac Newton, borrowing a metaphor from earlier thinkers. But what if those giants hadn’t been so keen to freely share their insights, methods and knowledge? In what state would we find science, technology and scholarship today had the intellectual giants, Newton included, been more inclined to sell their findings to the highest bidder?