The freedom to innovate: a privilege or a right?

The human facility for innovation was centrally important in the evolutionary origin and advancement of our species: it increased survival and reproduction by improving adaptation in uncertain and changing environments. The capacity to innovate was vitally important in the development and persistence of thriving, complex societies. Pivotal early innovations are familiar to all: agriculture , through the domestication of plants and animals and inventions like the scythe and the plow; transportation, through inventions like the wheel and the sail; and engineering, through the development of efficient building materials and the discovery of principles such as the lever and the arch. As societies have become more aware that innovations can also produce unintended consequences, the products of innovation have become subject to societal regulation. Today it is widely accepted that the rights of innovators should be balanced against the right of the community to regulate commerce and the environment to protect the health and well-being of all citizens. The human species now faces an enormous , unprecedented challenge in trying to provide sustainably for a projected 9 billion world citizens by 2050 and to do so in the context of a changing climate. If humanity is to meet this challenge—producing abundant , nutritious food while preserving diverse natural habitats worldwide—it is essential that innovators everywhere have access to enabling technologies, such as for genetic modification of crop species. Excessive regulation, restrictive ownership of enabling technologies, and disinformation campaigns are all worrisome barriers to the efficient and effective application of these technologies to real problems of great and broad societal importance. Intellectual property ownership rights, by definition and intent, limit the ability of scientists to innovate and to commercialize the products of their innovations. It is accepted that the right to a limited monopoly granted by patents should be in exchange for the disclosure of inventions. Thus, public disclosure should be an important function of the patent system, and efforts to make the claims of patents and patent applications more transparent and navigable, such as the Patent Lens (www.patentlens.net), should be supported by all. However, when patent rights are excessively broad they may also stifle innovation. Free trade agreements , for example, generally incorporate intellectual property protections and so intellectual property rights are beginning to have global scope. The stated justification for these broad protections is that the world economy will benefit from global intellectual property rights because the economy will grow …