Sir, It is now widely recognised that the system of law and practice that has regulated science and protected the rights of those who make scientific discoveries and turn them into products and therapies in a process known as “innovation” is unfit to serve the needs of the contemporary world.

Science and the innovation it generates is a vast enterprise: commercial and pro-bono, public and private, industrial and educational, amateur and professional. It permeates our lives and shapes the world. Some would say it is the defining characteristic of modern society, stimulating and harnessing our innate curiosity and, more than any other endeavour, shaping our world and, increasingly, ourselves.

An important component of the innovation process is the idea of ownership of science and technology and its products, enabling profits to be made from research and development. The question of “Who owns science?” is therefore a crucial one, the answer to which will have broad-reaching implications for scientific progress and for the way in which the benefits of science are distributed, fairly or otherwise. Two of the most pressing issues concern equity of access to scientific knowledge and the useful products that arise from that knowledge.

The current system of managing research and innovation incorporates a complex body of law governing the ownership of “intellectual property” — copyright and patents being the most familiar. Intellectual property rights are intended to provide incentives that encourage the advancement of science, enhance the pace of innovation, increase the derived economic benefits and provide a fair way of regulating access to these benefits. But does it really achieve these purposes? There is increasing concern that, to the contrary, it may, under some circumstances, impede innovation, lead to monopolisation, and unduly restrict access to the benefits of knowledge.

We believe it is time to reassess the effect of the present regime of intellectual property rights, especially with respect to the area of patent law, on science, innovation and access to technologies and determine whether it is liberating — or crushing; whether it operates to promote scientific progress and human welfare – or to frustrate it.

The second issue we wish to highlight is that of access to science itself. The ideal shared by almost all scientists is that science should be open and transparent, not just in its practices and procedures, but so that the results and the knowledge generated through research should be freely accessible to all. There is a broad consensus in the scientific community that such openness and transparency promotes the advancement of science and enhances the likelihood that the benefits of science are enjoyed by all. For more than a hundred years, these principles have been the bedrock of academia and the scientific community.

We call upon all interested in the future of science to join with us in an active and open-ended search for answers.

John Sulston
Chair, Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, University of Manchester

Joseph Stiglitz
Chair, Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester

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