There appears to be confusion between intellectual property and knowledge in this thread. Intellectual property is a legal term and is defined in the legal concepts of property/ownership. Knowledge is not a legal term and knowledge can be shared by all, discovered by many simultaneously and contains both proprietary and general knowledge.

While I can see the advantages of an ultra utopian world where IP is shared it is of course sheer fantasy. Research costs a great deal of money, a great deal of effort and even huge emotional cost. The data obtained has been 'earned' by the researcher and she deserves to get a benefit from it.

To those who do believe that IP should be shared I advise that they leave the keys in their cars that others may share the use of them. They should give any spare room in their houses to the homeless and share their food with all of their neighbours.

Intelectual property is as real as the physical property described above. It is earned and it is owned. I agree fully with Dirk and Eigentum verpflictet is an elegant way of describing the obligations of ownership. Selling rights to use intellectual property is perfectly ethical and should be seen as no different to requiring rent for a room or wages for work.

Hi Raveendra,

You certainly have a laundry list of intellectually stimulating questions. However, I was surprise that you omitted any mention of Monsanto and its use of intellectual property rights to "capture the world's food supply". Have you viewed THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO? You can see it here:

Gwen

Hi Gwendolyn,

Of course, the first IP issue that comes to mind is Monsanto. I just admire the way they mask their spiel and justify their existence by putting on the "Monsanto Saves the World" act. It pretty sums up the policy of most MNC's. The 'killer switch gene' they incorporated into cotton seeds rendering them infertile after one season, forcing farmers to again rely on Monsanto for cotton seeds, instead of saving some seeds for the next crop, IMHO, is the highpoint of corporate greed. One wonders how in the whole world did anyone come up with such an absolutely rotten way to earn a crooked living.

But the underlying reasons are complex. Monsanto only reflects a deeper malaise. While Monsanto is only a symptom, the disease exists in society, in us. Blaming Monsanto and taking action would be like suppressing a fever or killing the messenger. It doesn't serve any purpose, and in all likelihood, aggravates the situation. The decline in ethical behavior, the gradual disappearance of the family support system which clearly demarcates good and bad, erosion of values in general are to blame. If one needs to take action, it is against these issues, not Monsanto. We should also remember that a large number of researchers are hand-in-glove with Monsanto, justifying their actions with whatever excuses they can find. The change, should start with 'me'.

"Be the Change you want to see in the World"-Gandhi

Beautifully expressed!

Thanks, Raveendra,

Gwen

Gwen,

You are welcome.

Regards

Free knowledge is an idea we have to conquer, in an effort to render our species even better. My father taught me to always provide my know-hows to others. Knowledge should be free. Whoever hinders it has no idea that in our era, everything, and i mean EVERYTHING is accessible...

Vasilios,

That's a beautiful idea. Now how do we make it work practically? Any models?

Regards

Raveendra

Intellectual property must attract ownership rights just as any other property. While there are myriad arguments about the morality or ethics of intellectual property it is a fact that we live in a property based society and have done so for over 9,000 years. A person must be able to benefit from the exercise of skill or talent or knowledge. We reward artists, musicians sports people, in many cases very handsomely for their skills. We should reward scientists, inventors and innovators in all disciplines accordingly. It is not really whether IP should personally benefit individuals that is the problem in this question is is to what degree this should be exercised.

Barry:

I agree with you that there's nothing plainly black and white here: it is the degree of ownership that must be considered. IP should rewarded, sure, but how about preventing others from using the same? Like using the 'killer gene switch' employed by Monsanto to prevent poor farmers from re using their seeds for the next crop season? Is there a scale which says-Rotten, Mean, Bad, Okay, Fair enough & Good?

Regards

You asked this question -->Do we own information, knowledge, and wisdom, or do they belong to all?

I have worked with many manufacturing companies and often their collective knowledge (IPs) about how to design and develop a piece of artifacts or marketable product are considered proprietary and confidential.

In most instances, if you are an employee or if you work-for-hire, and if you come up with a new concept or develop a new idea or a new product, the associated "know-how" knowledge is considered the property of the parent company -- not of the individual employee, who came up with that idea on the first place.

I have not seen much deviation from such practices every where I have worked.

There is one exception. Today, companies are leveraging such "know-how" knowledge to bring more novel products to the marketplace more quicker than anytime before.

Today, in order to multiply the successes from such IPs, many companies are capturing those knowledge internally from SMEs (subject-matter experts) and reusing such precious IPs to their advantage. Once such knowledge (IPs) is captured from SMEs, they are redeploying those IPs to train others (who are not so knowledgeable) to design more of the similar type of products, thus adding to their (parent company) profitability and growth and thereby considerably improving their bottom line.

You may find some success stories of how this is done at this Link:

http://www.knowledgesol.com/kcrplm-applications.html

http://www.knowledgesol.com/uploads/2/4/3/9/24393270/a_knowledge-based_system_engineering_process_for_obtaining_engineering_design_solutions_asme-detc2005-85561_final2.pdf

Raveendra and Barry:

Intellectual property indicates that somebody has taken 'a step forward', while sometimes acknowledging those who have made efforts before him/her.

Putting it in the form of questions, I would ask, should IP be shared after certain period of monopoly; and for how long should the monopoly last? Should IP be kept indefinitely, hoping the products cannot be lost with time?

It is difficult to quantify how much benefits we have all gained through knowledge shared (either locally or in formal research institutes) in health related researches and a hosts of other disciplines.

Dear Brian, Akintayo,

Thank you for your description of idea ownership in technology companies. True, the idea and the innovation gets to become the property of the company as the creative person is an employee in the company's payroll. The way companies admirably squeeze the last drop out of SME's to the advantage & bottom line of the company with well formulated processes is the highlight of efficiency. But the question is; is this ethical? Should the knowledge belong entirely to the company, to be sold by the company to whomsoever it sees fit as profitable or should it belong to the public after a period of sole patent/copyright ownership?

As mentioned in my question above, is competition the mantra of the day, breeding conflict, strife, industrial espionage, companies and countries going to war over trade treaties OR should everything be open source, breeding healthy competition and co-operation for those who exert, rewarding them nominally instead of the huge hedonistic profit margins from patents and copyrights?

Knowledge exchange is perfectly ok, but everything should, IMHO, be in the spirit of public welfare. Not selfish accumulation of wealth to the disadvantage of others as is fostered by IP and patent laws.

The early spiritual scientists who came up with the foundations of math, physics, grammar, chemistry...never intended to profit from their work. Theirs was the spirit of sacrifice and offering, to the welfare of all humanity. They did not even attest their names to their works, most preferring to remain anonymous. It is ironical that individuals coming together collectively in the form of companies, taking advantage of a country's fairplay and justice notions, take individual greed to such high levels of selfishness.

An important Mathematics book prescribed by the New York State Education Department acknowledges the debt to these unknown savants in the following words:

" The Western world owes a great deal to India for a simple invention. It was developed by an unknown Indian more than 1500 years ago. Without it most of the great discoveries and inventions (including computers) of western civilization would never have come about. This invention was the decimal system of numerals - nine digits and a zero. The science and technology of today (including the computers) could not have developed if we had only the Roman system of numerals. That system is too clumsy to be used as a scientific tool. Today we take the decimal system for granted. We don't think about how brilliant the man who invented zero must have been. Yet without zero we could not assign a place value to the digits. That ancient mathematician, whoever he was, deserves much honor."

Is this not the best example of the pure spirit of science untainted by greed and personal profit? Are such ideals out of place in a selfish society such as ours now?

Regards

Raveendra's point is very clear here, and it is humbling to know that most of the people responsible for the basic (and/or solid) foundation upon which modern technology took its roots were anonymous.

Someone can lead a research on the moderation of patent law and companies' control over workers' (original) innovations, to make their works more beneficial and easily accessible to the public at a cheaper price. Some governments do this but the level of efficiency differ from one place to another. A new research on moderation could be a good thing.

My five cent: As has already been pointed out, this is no black-or-white thing. Most would subscribe to the view that what Monsanto does is just the - admittedly extreme - application of a principle: What they do is legal and economically 100% rational (after all, a company's only raison d'etre is to increase its profit). And, since most people would regard this state of affairs as undesirable, something must be wrong with the principle.

On the other hand, it is easy to see that completely ridding ourselves of any mechanisms that ensure economic payback on acts of innovation may have serious negative impacts.

There needs to be some middle ground. A principle of German jurisdiction is "Eigentum verpflichtet": "ownership comes with obligations."

If you were the owner of the single source of drinking water in 100 miles radius, you were not only morally, but alos *legally* obliged to share your water with those who would otherwise die from thirst. "Sharing" does not mean to give it away for free, it is perfectly OK to charge money for this, but it would NOT be OK not to sell it.

Assuming the principle that "property comes with obligations" would allow to stick to the concept of "intellectual property" and mitigate the perverse consequences that above posts have alluded to.

In short: The problem may not be with the concept of IP, but javascript:rather in the idea that property of whather kind may come without obligations.

There appears to be confusion between intellectual property and knowledge in this thread. Intellectual property is a legal term and is defined in the legal concepts of property/ownership. Knowledge is not a legal term and knowledge can be shared by all, discovered by many simultaneously and contains both proprietary and general knowledge.

While I can see the advantages of an ultra utopian world where IP is shared it is of course sheer fantasy. Research costs a great deal of money, a great deal of effort and even huge emotional cost. The data obtained has been 'earned' by the researcher and she deserves to get a benefit from it.

To those who do believe that IP should be shared I advise that they leave the keys in their cars that others may share the use of them. They should give any spare room in their houses to the homeless and share their food with all of their neighbours.

Intelectual property is as real as the physical property described above. It is earned and it is owned. I agree fully with Dirk and Eigentum verpflictet is an elegant way of describing the obligations of ownership. Selling rights to use intellectual property is perfectly ethical and should be seen as no different to requiring rent for a room or wages for work.

I will concentrate mainly on point 1 and I would suggest in breaking this thread into smaller sub problems. This is a very interesting thread and merits more than one.

In my view intellectual property still needs to be supported and encouraged based on the following observations:

a) There is a difference between scientific and academic research as opposed to corporate development. While corporate development borrows from academic research, it is mostly not considered research by academics(though it can be as challenging). This means that academic sources of funding will not necessarily translate into corporate research and development funding and therefore will need to be priced into what is charged to customers. This will need investment until it is recovered by charges to customers through capital investment and intellectual capital acquired will be a form of collateral for the investment

b) Government sources of funding are limited and it would strain even further the research funding if all venues were opened to corporate research and development. This would create an imbalance in competition since big corporations can put more resources to work on a given problem than individuals in academic circles. This reasoning would also reinforce the need to have intellectual capital as collateral for capital investment.

c) Intelletual capital uses knowledge in its formula (besides some sprinkle of art and luck)for success. while it is debatable whether computer programs and business processes qualify for intellectual property, it has to be looked at from a historical perspective. Since intellectual property protection grew out of the necessity to protect big investments (such as manufacturing equipment during the industrial revolution, telegraph infrastructure, railroad equipment), such big investments needed protection from copycats. From that point forward to this day the need for protection of big investments(think all the R&D for pharma) from  copycats has been warranted and it has remained a necessary evil.

d) Sometimes we need to be reminded that sources of funding need something in return. Think of not being paid for your profession! How would you survive if students took your courses and did not pay?

Sometimes we forget that the greatest intellectual capital resources of academia are professors who generate ideas. The university pays for the development of a professors ideas, therefore they need protection in the form of economic stability.The same applies to investors (though some of them have enough that could with stand some losses. but that is not a problem of intellectual property but asymmetries in economic compensation).

What would happen to R&D if there was no incentive to invest?

just a thought

Raveendra:

If the work is for hire, and the work is performed on company business, time and costs, how could you say that it is unethical for your parent company not to have the right to reuse?

You may have  right to share a part of profits from the proceeds, if the company wants to sell it outright - may be? Just a thought!!!

Innovative ideas are of course based upon the recognition of previous works. In the introductory paragraph of a Nobel Laureate’s article, we find a lot of bibliographic references admitting the contribution of former experiences. That is obviously and basically a matter of scientific ethics. Presently, the O.A literature impulses new conceptions of the distribution of knowledge. As soon as 1991, a lot of contributions, not formally submitted to “classical/academic” publications (in the sense of WoS/JCR) were “offered” to the scientific community for examination and discussion. The minimum Creative Commons Licence “by”, so as its “Share alike” variant, are a good illustration of that openness. The CC-by, for instance, is clearly mentioned on each article of the O.A. journals edited by the European Geophysical Union. And the joined Open Discussion offers other opportunities. Several initiatives recall the former notion of “Advancement of Science” well known at the end of the 18th Century, already present at the time of Descartes, hundred years before. The French Revolution had popularized that trend. Nowadays, scientific ethics is often hurt by careerist prospects. Nevertheless some young PhD students, so as emeritus professors (who have nothing to loose in criticizing the present academic landscape) may build a new spirit. Altmetrics is also another way to show or to indicate the fragmentation, the atomization of knowledge. We see today more and more “Scientific knowledge objects”ans "liquid publications" (according to Roberto Casati's concept), which should be shared according to a correct deontology. We should also examine the prospects and legitimacy of new forms of communication and scientific assessment.

http://disi.unitn.it/~birukou/publications/papers/2010LP_D1.2v2.pdf

http://urfistjne2014.wordpress.com/english-version/

please attention to relation bteween words:

information get on of data and knowledge to be macking with information and wisdom is result of knowledge

we can analysis data,information and knoledege , but wisdom is method of thinking ,

Thank you Mossayyeb! Wisdom, as you have said, is the fruit of all the others put together. Data, Information & Knowledge. In fact wisdom is knowledge in action in the right direction. Right direction is the benefit for all, not  some individuals alone. We are here due to the efforts of giants earlier. Therefore, what I produce now builds upon the past efforts.of various great people. Therefore none of it can be actually credited to be mine.

Regards

Hello Raveendra Nath Yasarapu.

The explanations given by Mr. Barry Turner are perfectly in place. Your response to Monsanto principle is deep and perfectly in place too. Your questions, 8 in number, are deep and well structured. I never realized that someone can concisely query the rot that is confronting modern man in question format. The answers to the subject of this thread and your 8-questions lie within the realms of spiritual, spirito-material and material activities. I will try to be detailed as much as possible:

1. There is definitely confusion here between knowledge and intellectual property, just as Mr. Barry Turner noted. I am a researcher, an inventor and an innovator. I have more than five innovations/inventions in my possession. But make no mistake, I am not rich. Contrary to what and wrote, knowledge and intellectual property have nothing to do with commercial/corporate industries. The excesses of commercial/corporate industries in relation to this subject is a case lawlessness.

2. Knowledge has a process. Am not surprised that this thread has not mentioned because this process is very elusive. You must have a SIMPLE nature to see it and most importantly your desire to invent/innovate MUST not be driven by MONEY. Otherwise, it will never happen.

The PROCESS: It always starts from an individual with an IDEA/INSIGHT as solution to an issue. PLEASE NOTE: CONCEPT DOES NOT BELONG HERE. CONCEPT IS PURELY A MENTAL EXERCISE. AN IDEA/INSIGHT IS SPIRITUAL IN NATURE. HOW/WHEN/WHERE IT WILL COME, NOBODY HAS CONCTROL OVER.

THIS IS THE MAIN REASON MUSICIANS USE DRUG TO PUT THEMSELVES IN THAT STATE IN WHICH IDEAS/INSIGHTS CAN COME TO THEM. You should know the story of Einstein and the E=mc2.

But an idea/insight may be irrelevant until it takes form. So, at this stage, the individual may decide to share it (FREE INFORMATION AND NOT KNOWLEDGE) or bring it into reality by himself/herself. If brought into reality by the idea/insight bearer, he/she must test it. If the test is a solution, then a prototype is born. The idea/insight bearer now has KNOWLEDGE OF A SOLUTION to an issue. The knowledge must still be widely tested in order to develop WISDOM in its application.

3. So, in essence, idea/insight is what is FREE, not knowledge contrary to . If an idea/insight comes to you, you either share it or use. Otherwise, it will visit another another person. Then, if you choose to use it, you must be HIGHLY ETHICAL, especially when considering intellectual property. Life is NOT about COMPETITION, it is about SERVICE from the Heart. Even after assembling an idea/insight for test, it might still not work. The inventor will still discover many clues during test. This discovery requires HUMILITY or it will NEVER happen. You don't throw gold to swine; discretion must be applied in sharing knowledge, hence it is not FREE.

In conclusion, the understanding tied to "survival of the fittest" is shallow, primitive and destructive. "Survival of the fittest" is about the degree of a person's connection with his/her subjective side in respect of accurately and radically tapping his/her inner promptings in order to stay afloat in a turbulence, thereby creating new survival record. It is NOT about FRAUD. Also, remember the story of Lot's wife in the Bible: What you look at you become. Leave the commercial/corporate industries alone to their ruthlessness. Think of what you are doing to assist that person with an idea get to the next stage, whether they show gratitude for it or not.

Do what you can while you can.

Sincere regards.

Intellectual Property (IP) can often be more valuable than material property since it often gives rise to material property in the first place. Now unless one decides to change the rules and laws of a given society regarding material property, one should not even question the existence of IP. If information and knowledge should belong to all then surely all other things should belong to all as well, since IP can become material property soon or later. However, western societies and most other societies do not follow a communist path as such (anymore).

Another element to consider; the imperfect state of Information thereby creating an IP divide making (1) the information-rich take advantage of the information-poor; (2) the information-aware take advantage of the information-ignorant; (3) those with resources and access take advantage of those without resources and access. Whole infrastructures have evolved to support the global IP industry.  Special interests and operators with intimate knowledge of this global landscape  take advantage of knowledge shadows and imperfect information flows to their own end. Without the resources to participate with fairness and equality on a level basis, there is danger of widening and deepening the global IP divide.

To cite a few examples: How did the musical instrument of the steel pan created by the ingenuity of the local Trinidadian community in the country of Trinidad and Tobago come to be registered in the US Patent Office to an individual American ?  This injustice cannot be dislodged.

Why is the US entertainment industry engineering an extension of the standard copyright period beyond the present normal period (which was originated based on the lifetime of a human creator) to a new normal based on the corporate person ?

Issues to consider in this debate.

George,

I thinks its a matter of give and take. The one who has come up with the 'idea/knowledge' should understand that he has only been 'given' the privilege of  channeling the idea for the welfare of humanity and use it in that direction instead of claiming sole ownership and his own intellectual brilliance.

The one who receives the 'idea/knowledge'  and uses it for his/her own betterment should also realise the above and honor the other person for being a channel through which the idea flowed to humanity. This way both parties respect and honor each other instead of cheaply clinging on to the idea/knowledge.

That's the reason why information and knowledge are grossly inadequate. They have to mature to wisdom. The above explained illustration is the manner in which knowledge and wisdom were disseminated in ancient India and all other civilisations which came to India for knowledge. It followed the ancient "master-disciple' tradition where no economics were present, keeping the flow pure. The disseminator of wisdom should not expect and the receiver should honor the source without asking.

"Wisdom belongs to none and all belong to wisdom" is an ancient dictum.

Regards

If you can prove that you have created something unique, then it must be able to claim those rights as 'intellectual property'. Data transferred into information, if collected and don't belong to someone (private data) can be owned. But collecting information of other people and using them or selling them without permission unethical and even if those data are collected by you, they are not yours. See what is happening with Facebook and Google and other social media companies. There are laws about privacy. General knowledge doesn't belong to anyone, but if it is applied into a product, then it becomes a property if that knowledge is not already part of a product. Wisdom is to general to be owned by anyone.