As we all know, patenting has become a very familiar task in the research landscape. One critical question remains: whether intellectual property is fundamentally inconsistent with the norms of research science. Although, we are likely to ask more questions around what sorts of research discoveries should be patented and about how proprietary research tools should be disseminated in the research community.
Intellectual property has been an important phenomenon in research science. According to me it is absolutely essential to preserve the benefits of intellectual property while minimizing interference with the progress of science.
When large corporations are investing so many dollars on research and often the goals of the competitors are similar. It is very likely the output will be similar or pretty close, then how does one really qualify infringement.
In the global landscape, the validity of the patent is largely questionable in many countries. Making sure you are protected in every country is often very expensive and some countries don’t have the intellectual property rights as in U.S. How does a corporation deal with global infringements?
I am not suggesting that corporations should not harvest IP, but in many cases they are going over-board with IP protection. Patent the core-technologies and the technology that is going to be market differentiators but not every new thing you come across.