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Comment by strbean | Hacker News Reader

> I strongly believe that the pursuing of patents gets in the way of the collaboration that helps science progress. It creates evidence of innovation (ie patents), but slows actual innovation.

See the mess around CRISPR patents for an excellent example of this.

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The CRISPR debacle is a funny story because on one side you have a public institution and on the other side you have a private institution.

However, both in reality are publicly funded whether that be through government grants or tax breaks on endowments. I think we should do a trade: an institution that in someway benefits from the public should get credit for the discovery but patent goes back to the public.

Edit: I realize there’s a chance that whatever I just said, there’s a small European country that already has implemented this idea.

Patents are a gigantic scam and the entire system should be scrapped. True free market would allow competition. This is just an artificial monopoly and it's needless and does not help competition.

What’s crazy is universities don’t fund research. That’s a more central issue. They both directly profit from research and want to then own the results of that research, it’s a parasitic relationship with funding agencies.

They do. Most universities also rely on other sources to supplement research including donations, endowment spending, ip, and even tuition.

When a university’s are extracting more money from doing research on net then they invest in research that’s not funding. They do get rather creative with accounting, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion.

EX: A students tuition paid for by a research grant does not count as R&D spending by the University or even R&D.

See the motivation to fund CRISPR research for a counterpoint.

Was the bulk of CRISPR research mostly funded by private emtities or was it government funding in EU, US and others? Where the private emtities even going to undertake CRISPR research if there was no public funding?

Would be interesting to see a study that showcases which was the major factor to research on that field is.

You’re getting downvoted, but I agree.

At least in biotech, patents drive a ton investment. How else do you get companies with billion dollar series A’s?

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