Brevetti Universitari, Innovazione e la Tragedia degli Anticommons

The debate on patents in biotechnology and pharmaceutics has a long story (Eisenberg 1996). In 1980, three events made the former and changed the latter: the invention of the Cohen-Boyer method for DNA splicing, the Diamond vs Chakrabarty sentence, permitting the patenting of GMOs, and the Bayh-Dole Act, allowing the privatisation of research made with federal funds by universities, among other entities. These laws, and the surge in university patenting after, reflamed the never ending debate over the opportunity of regulating the innovation system through privatization of knowledge. This thesis explores a popular argument against patent, developed by Heller and Eisenberg in 1998: the tragedy of the anticommons. They state that since the production of knowledge uses its output (new research, innovation,...) as input, patenting can impose high transaction costs as result of the difficulties of finding and bargaining with all the relevant patents’ holders. In other words, if knowledge is seen as common, when too many agents are able to exclude others from use there’s a risk of under-utilisation. This should apply in particular to biotechnology because of the high complexity of the field and the high number of patents. Academic patents are deemed to be more dangerous, since they are considered the most basic and thus more applicable to the innovations: restricting access to these could cause harm to a broad spectrum of research and innovations.