Our patent laws have tended toward extension that often benefits monopolistic companies. A recent decreased in government transparency and changes to copyright laws makes access to research data more difficult and expensive for researchers, students, and the public. A new mandatory licensing should be implemented and fair use expanded to permit free use for non-commercial research purposes by anyone. This exemption shall include circumventing digital locks, which could be used to defeat fair use under bill C-32. Jake Andraka, high school child prodigy who came up with a potential cancer protein detection method, shows that breakthrough research does not necessarily come from academia or big corporations. Jake touts open access as the enabling resource that led to the success of his research. [1]
The Pirate Party of Canada proposes the creation of a Nationwide Research Collaboration Centre, linking researchers and agencies across the country, to act as curator of research data. The new centre will also act to coordinate the creation of virtual national laboratory networks across the country, including at universities. The centre shall ensure wide accessibility for researchers within and outside of the field of academia. It shall identify and forecast areas and facilities with the most demand, or where there is an expected lack of resources.
Our deference to large corporations, such as big pharmaceutical companies, to do research for the next breakthrough and cure is stifling progress [2]. Often times it is against the interest of those companies to do so since those discoveries could mean the end of their product or business model. Basic research also cost more with no guarantee of immediate return. This is also leading to high health care and drug costs as lobbied patent term extensions are used to keep drugs out of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers’ hands longer.
In this present information age, we need a medium to ensure that the vast research data is freely accessible to other researchers. The new centre should be non-profit driven and independent from Minister and partisan government of the day. This will keep decisions from being politicized, and prevent distraction from the constant change in leadership with each election cycle.
An example of research that could benefit from such a centre is the emerging and promising field of nanotechnologies. Nanotechnology will be the integrated circuit (IC), personal computer building block innovation, equivalent for quantum and atomic engineered physical and medical materials of this century and millennium. The payoff from this include higher efficiency solar panels [3], improved energy storage battery technology[4], medical breakthroughs, and engineering materials with new strengths and properties. The centre could also provide a database of research data such as that resulting from research on sustainable and usable fusion energy, or other forms of energy.
Data and papers from research done with public funds or facilities must be freely available. The public must have wide open access to the data so as not to limit the amount of research. Copyright and patent restriction will be exempted for home users, Makers, and non-commercial hobbyists. We must ensure that innovative do-it-yourself personal projects using 3D printers, software and other emerging technologies are free for people to play and tinker with. Hacking, the original meaning referring to one who breaks things apart or reverse engineers to learn how a tool works, is what has enabled the rapid advancement in our computing technologies. It was only later that the term hacking was used to refer to computer crime [5]. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ was able to reverse engineer and improve on existing technologies before the emergence of so called copyright and patent “trolls” – a mainstream attempts by corporations to use copyright and patent laws to gain ownership, control, and constrain the ability to manufacture or innovate for their own interests in generating personal profit.
This is an example of why open access and non-commercial use exemption needs to be enacted to protect the freedom of Canadian innovators to “hack”, tinker and develop new breakthrough ideas and products for the advancement of the 21st century citizen. If a discovery is being commercialized, then mandatory licensing would protect the public from anti-competitive behavior such as the patent encumbrance of the NimH battery for the electric automobile. The mandatory license should be fair, non-discriminatory, and affordable.
The coming years will see a lot of new innovations. We must ensure that these new technologies and discoveries remain accessible while providing the inventor, who has built on existing knowledge, with incentives through a reasonable patent term as a head-start over their competitors. While at the same time ensuring that patent law cannot be used as a monopolistic tool, or as a means to prevent others from doing further research to advance a Canadian innovation.
[1] 16-year-old Touts Role of Open Access in Breakthrough Cancer Diagnostic, http://www.sparc.arl.org/news/16-year-old-touts-role-open-access-breakthrough-cancer-diagnostic-interview-jack-andraka-dr
[2] The strange tale of Canada’s ebola vaccine, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/11/25/the_strange_tale_of_canadas_ebola_vaccine_walkom.html
[3] A 3D nanostructure for improved solar-cell efficiency, http://spie.org/x39220.xml
[4] Nanotechnology better battery technology, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141117-nanotechnology-for-better-batteries/
[5] A Short History of “Hack”, http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-short-history-of-hack