The Patent and the Paper: a Few Thoughts on Late Modern Science and Intellectual Property
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1573600Keywords:
academic publishing, patenting, intellectual property, Marie CurieAbstract
Marie and Pierre Curie’s decision not to patent the discovery (1898) and later isolation (1902) of radium is perhaps the most famous of all disinterested decisions in the history of science. To choose publishing instead of patenting and openness instead of enclosure was hardly a radical choice at the time. Traditionally, we associate academic publishing with “pure science” and Mertonian ideals of openness, sharing and transparency. Patenting on the other hand, as a byproduct of “applied science” is intimately linked to an increased emphasis and dependency on commercialization and technology transfer within academia. Starting from the Curies’ mythological decision I delineate the contours of an increasing convergence of the patent and the paper (article) from the end of the nineteenth-century until today. Ultimately, my goal is to suggest a few possible ways of addressing the hybrid space that today constitute the terrain of late modern science and intellectual property.
References
Bolter, David J. (2001): Writing Space. LEA, Mawhah, NJ.
Cassier, Maurice (2008): “’Patenting in the Public Interest:’ Administration of Insulin Patents by the University of Toronto,” History of Technology 24: 2, 153-171. DOI: 10.1080/07341510701810948
Curie, Marie (1923): Pierre Curie. New York: Macmillan.
Csiszar, Alex (2010): “Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print and Its Problems during the late Nineteenth Century,” History of Science 48: 3-4, 399-434. DOI: 10.1177/007327531004800306
ESPCI (2015): L’ESPCI ParisTech : un modèle d’exception https://www.espci.fr/fr/espci-paristech/, last accessed May 11, 2015.
Etzkowitz, Henry (1994): “Knowledge as Property: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Debate over Academic Patent Policy,” Minerva 32: 4, 383-421. DOI: 10.1007/BF01098031
Greenberg, David (2007): Science for Sale. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306261.001.0001
Hemmungs Wirtén, Eva (2015): Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lemley, Mark A. and A Douglas Melamed (2013): “Missing the Forest for the Trolls,” Columbia Law Review 113:8, 2117-2189. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2269087
Lucier, Paul (1996): “Court and Controversy: Patenting Science in the Nineteenth Century,” The British Journal for the History of Science 29: 2, 139-154. DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400034191
McSherry, Corynne (2001): Who Owns Academic Work? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Merton, Robert (1968): Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Metlay, Grischa (2006): “Reconsidering Renormalization: Stability and Change in 20th-Century Views on University Patents,” Social Studies of Science 36:4, 565-597. DOI: 10.1177/0306312706058581
Myers, Greg (1995): “From Discovery to Invention. The Writing and Rewriting of Two Patents,” Social Studies of Science 25: 1, 57-105. DOI: 10.1177/030631295025001004
Popp Berman, Elizabeth (2008): “Why Did Universities Start Patenting? Institution-Building and the Road to the Bayh-Dole Act,” Social Studies of Science 38: 6, 835-871. DOI: 10.1177/0306312708098605
Rader, H. ed. (2010): The Commodification of Academic Research. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Rai, Arti K. and Rebecca S. Eisenberg (2003): “Bayh-Dole Reform and the Progress of Biomedicine,” Law and Contemporary Problems 66, 289-314. DOI: 10.1511/2003.1.52
Rimmer, Matthew (2008): Intellectual Property and Biotechnology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. DOI: 10.4337/9781848440180
Rooksby, Jacob H. (2013): “Myriad Choices: University Patents Under the Sun,” Journal of Law and Education 42: 2, 313-326.
Shapin, Steven (2008): The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226750170.001.0001
Swann Harding, T. (1941): “Exploitation of the Creators,” Philosophy of Science 8:3, 385-90. DOI: 10.1086/286712
Swanson, Kara W (2009): “The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner,” Technology and Culture 50: 3, 519-548. DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0298
Weiner, Charles (1987): “Patenting and Academic Research: Historical Case Studies,” Science, Technology and Human Values 12: 1, 50-62.
Willinsky, John (2009): The Access Principle. The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT press, 2009.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 Hemmungs Wirtén
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright for all manuscripts rests with the author(s). The editors reserve the right to edit manuscripts. Contributors are responsible for acquiring all permissions from the copyright owners for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables, etc. Each author must, before final publication fill, in a publishing agreement provided by LiU E-Press.
Since 2021 Culture Unbound uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license for new articles, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given. For older articles please see each article landing page.
