A Commercial Opportunity ?
A Commercial Opportunity?
Ikeda was always interested in bioinformatics and decided to use some of his free time to write a program that others in his microbial genetics laboratory would find useful. Starting with a popular spreadsheet program on his university-provided computer, he wrote the program over the summer and posted it on his personal Web page as a bundle that combined the spreadsheet program and his own program. Over the next academic year, he improved his program several times based partly on the feedback he got from the people in his laboratory who were using it.
At national meetings, he discovered that researchers in other laboratories had begun to download and use his program package, and friends told him that they knew of researchers who were using it in industry. When the issue arose in a faculty meeting, Ikeda’s faculty adviser told him that he should talk with the university’s technology transfer office about commercializing it. “After all,” his adviser said, “if you don’t, a company will probably copy it and sell it and benefit from your hard work.”
The director of the technology transfer office was much more concerned about another issue: the fact that Ikeda had been redistributing the spreadsheet in violation of its license. “You do have rights to what you created, but the company that sells this spreadsheet also has rights,” he said. “We need to talk about this before we talk about commercialization.”
1.What obligations does Ikeda have to the developer of the original spreadsheet program? To the university that provided the spreadsheet and computer?
2.What are the pros and cons of trying to commercialize a program that is based on another's product?
3.What conflicts and practical difficulties might Ikeda encounter if he tries to operate a business while working on his dissertation?
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Japanese edition: Research_Ethics11.html
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What is Bio-informatics; "Bioinformatics is a science field that is similar to but distinct from biological computation, while it is often considered synonymous to computational biology. Biological computation uses bioengineering and biology to build biological computers, whereas bioinformatics uses computation to better understand biology. Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the analysis of biological data, particularly DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. The field of bioinformatics experienced explosive growth starting in the mid-1990s, driven largely by the Human Genome Project and by rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology.Analyzing biological data to produce meaningful information involves writing and running software programs that use algorithms from graph theory, artificial intelligence, soft computing, data mining, image processing, and computer simulation. The algorithms in turn depend on theoretical foundations such as discrete mathematics, control theory, system theory, information theory, and statistics." - Bioinformatics
Intellectual property, "Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others.The most well-known types are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in the majority of the world's legal systems."- Intellectual property.
morality of intellectual property; "According to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author".[51] Although the relationship between intellectual property and human rights is a complex one,[52] there are moral arguments for intellectual property. The arguments that justify intellectual property fall into three major categories. Personality theorists believe intellectual property is an extension of an individual. Utilitarians believe that intellectual property stimulates social progress and pushes people to further innovation. Lockeans argue that intellectual property is justified based on deservedness and hard work.[53] Various moral justifications for private property can be used to argue in favor of the morality of intellectual property, such as: Natural Rights/Justice Argument: this argument is based on Locke's idea that a person has a natural right over the labour and products which are produced by their body. Appropriating these products is viewed as unjust. Although Locke had never explicitly stated that natural right applied to products of the mind,[54] it is possible to apply his argument to intellectual property rights, in which it would be unjust for people to misuse another's ideas.[55] Locke's argument for intellectual property is based upon the idea that laborers have the right to control that which they create. They argue that we own our bodies which are the laborers, this right of ownership extends to what we create. Thus, intellectual property ensures this right when it comes to production. Utilitarian-Pragmatic Argument: according to this rationale, a society that protects private property is more effective and prosperous than societies that do not. Innovation and invention in 19th century America has been attributed to the development of the patent system.[56] By providing innovators with "durable and tangible return on their investment of time, labor, and other resources", intellectual property rights seek to maximize social utility.[57] The presumption is that they promote public welfare by encouraging the "creation, production, and distribution of intellectual works".[57] Utilitarians argue that without intellectual property there would be a lack of incentive to produce new ideas. Systems of protection such as Intellectual property optimize social utility. "Personality" Argument: this argument is based on a quote from Hegel: "Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own".[58] European intellectual property law is shaped by this notion that ideas are an "extension of oneself and of one's personality".[59] Personality theorists argue that by being a creator of something one is inherently at risk and vulnerable for having their ideas and designs stolen and/or altered. Intellectual property protects these moral claims that have to do with personality." -morality of intellectual property.
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Notes: This case example is cited and codified from "US National
Academy of Sciences, On Being a
Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third
Edition, 2009."
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