[Ip-health] Biotech wants to be free, a Review of Biobazaar

[James Love]

www.newscientist.com

50 | NewScientist | 26 January 2008

"Biotech wants to be free," James Love

Review of Biobazaar: the open source revolution and biotechnology by
Janet Hope, Harvard University Press, $27.95, ISBN 9780674026353

[The lessons of open source software could benefit  biotechnology, but
it's important to recognise their differences, says James Love]

Returning to school for a refresher course in biotechnology, Janet Hope
becomes alarmed when each concept is presented along with a corporate
logo and ownership claim. Here's a technique, her professor tells her:
expression proinsulin in E. coli =E2=80=93 "owned" by Hoechst and eli Lilly=
. And
here's another: expression of mini-proinsulin in S. cerevisae =E2=80=93 "ow=
ned"
by novo nordisk.

Hope's fellow students are focused on careers in the corporate world, a
focus that seems to overshadow any wonder about science itself. She
contrasts this state of affairs to that of free software development, an
area that earlier caught her fancy when she heard a talk by free
software guru Richard Stallman. in the world of free software, freedom
and openness are defining principles of a new model of social
organisation involving collaboration between peers and a "bazaar"-style
production model without formal hierarchies.

In Biobazaar, Hope attempts to apply the principles of free software to
biotechnology. the book is centred on what she refers to as the
"irresistible analogy" between the two fields. But while the analogy
works some of the time, at other times it is strained. it works best in
asking how a research community can use licensing strategies to protect
scientific knowledge from enclosure bycorporate interests. it is least
persuasive in providing a business model for new drug development.

The open source software movement is built on innovative intellectual
property licences. the most influential is the Free Software
Foundation's gnu general Public License. gPL grants a "copyleft" licence
that allows people to take freely shared software code and modify it, so
long as they make their modified the same gPL terms.

Can a gPL-style licensing strategy protect biotechnology research from
proprietary controls? Hope reports on efforts to do just that, and the
frustrations that accompany them. the Human genome Project, for example,
rejected a restrictive licensing strategy and made important genomic
information publicly available, but now faces increasing threats from an
explosion of patents that limit the rights of researchers to use that
information. the international HapMap project cataloguing common human
genetic variants employed a copyleft-type clause that prohibited users
from patenting their data, but ultimately abandoned this approach
because it led to difficulties when trying to incorporate the project's
data into other genomic databases.

Among the core difficulties in adopting the software model to
biotechnology is the nature of the rights themselves. unlike lines of
software code, data doesn't qualify for copyright protection so, at
least in the US, it can't be both public and protected. Inventions can
be patented and licensed, but that is costly.

Even if one could design legal strategies to "copyleft" biotechnology,
would it, or should it, catch on? There is a tension between a
researcher's desire for freedom to operate and his or her need to ensure
financial returns for investors, and this has to be resolved before the
principles of free software can be applied to biotechnology. As long as
proprietary control ensures investors' returns, it will be difficult to
stop researchers and companies from legally enclosing medical knowledge.
Wishing it were not so isn't enough. One has to explain where the money
will come from, and Hope only hints at some solutions.

More government grants, for instance, might help, but there has to be
space for competition and private-sector decision-making. Hope cites a
proposal by Tim Hubbard and myself for the creation of "competitive
intermediaries", privately managed R&D outfits that invest in open
source projects.  They would be financed by contributions from
individuals and companies, who would be required by law to pay into the
fund of their choice. Separately, many are calling for a vastly expanded
role for prizes to replace marketing monopolies as the source of income
for drug developers.

So can the lessons of open source software be applied to biotechnology?
the answer is a qualified yes. there is much to be learned and
replicated from the free software field, but the differences are also
important. Are we on the verge of an open source revolution? if not a
revolution, surely a growing rebellion. Hope gives us food for thought
on the possibilities.

James Love is director of Knowledge Ecology International in Washington
DC


--
_____________________________
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
http://www.keionline.org, mailto:james.love@keionline.org
voice +1.202.332.2670, fax +1.202.332.2673, US mobile +1.202.361.3040, Gene=
va mobile +41.76.413.6584