Durell, Karen L.; Gold, E. Richard --- "Looking Beyond the Firm: Intellectual Asset Management and Biotechnology" [2009] ELECD 486; in Castle, David (ed), "The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Biotechnology Innovation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Biotechnology Innovation

Editor(s): Castle, David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209801

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Looking Beyond the Firm: Intellectual Asset Management and Biotechnology

Author(s): Durell, Karen L.; Gold, E. Richard

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

6. Looking beyond the firm:
intellectual asset management
and biotechnology
Karen L. Durell and E. Richard Gold

INTRODUCTION

The academic, business and international communities increasingly pay
attention to the rights ­ their nature and number ­ that companies have
over intellectual assets. The single-mindedness of this focus is, we argue,
misplaced, as it is not the right itself that is significant but rather the
way that companies and communities put these assets to work. Rights
in intellectual assets ­ commonly known as intellectual property rights
(`IPRs') ­ provide their holders with a right to veto the actions of others
with respect to the asset (whether that asset be knowledge, patents, copy-
right, trademarks, and so on). These actions include copying, making,
selling, offering for sale or importing goods which incorporate the asset
underlying the right. Just because an IPRs holder has the right to block
public access to an asset does not mean that he or she will do so. What the
right offers is the ability to make choices; how the rights holder chooses
to utilize an IPR affects, however, not only him or her, but society at
large. We argue that rights holders ought ­ not only for the public's sake
but for their own ­ make these choices within a framework which takes
into account the synergies arising from private and public actors working
within a community.
The strategic deployment of IPRs ­ what rights to keep, license or
assign, to whom to give permission to use underlying intellectual assets,
which corporate ...