Drive for patent-free innovation gathers pace

By: Declan Butler

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<h1>Drive for patent-free innovation gathers pace</h1>
<h4>By: Declan Butler</h4>
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<p><P>A group of leading scientists and economists is<B> </B>urging the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland, to promote ‘open’ models of innovation that do not rely on patents.</P><br />
<P>In a 7 July letter to WIPO director-general Kamil Idris, 59 individuals call on the organisation to hold a major conference in 2004 to consider the recent “explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods”, including the Human Genome Project and the open-source software movement. </P><br />
<P>The group believes that innovation based on freely available knowledge can be effective not just in areas where it has established a foothold – such as genome sequence data – but also in sectors where patent protection is entirely dominant, such as drug development.</P><br />
<P><a href="http://www.nature.com/login/scidev_login.taf?ref=/nature/journal/v424/n6945/full/424118a_fs.html" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Link to <em>Nature</em> news story</A> </P><br />
<P><a href="http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/kamil-idris-7july2003.pdf" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Link to letter to Kamil Idris</A> (PDF) </P>Reference: <em>Nature</em> 424, 118 (2003)</p>

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<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/news/drive-for-patentfree-innovation-gathers-pace/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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A group of leading scientists and economists is urging the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland, to promote ‘open’ models of innovation that do not rely on patents.

In a 7 July letter to WIPO director-general Kamil Idris, 59 individuals call on the organisation to hold a major conference in 2004 to consider the recent “explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods”, including the Human Genome Project and the open-source software movement.

The group believes that innovation based on freely available knowledge can be effective not just in areas where it has established a foothold – such as genome sequence data – but also in sectors where patent protection is entirely dominant, such as drug development.

Link to Nature news story

Link to letter to Kamil Idris (PDF)

Reference: Nature 424, 118 (2003)