The ‘Oxford model’ and the ‘anti-commons’ threat to the long-run vitality of collaborative e-Science

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Paul David speaks on the case for new moves in ‘legal jujitsu’ to mitigate adverse unintended consequences of growing university engagements in commercial exploitation of publicly funded research.

Background to the talk

The rapid spread during the past two decades of policies that have encouraged universities and other public research organizations (PROs) to claim and commercially exploit intellectual property rights based upon their faculties’ research findings has stirred both expressions of worried concern and enthusiasm. In a recently published article, two distinguished scientists (with Oxford connections) join the current and former managing director of Isis Innovation (the university-owned technology transfer company established by Oxford in 1988) in presenting a restrained version of the enthusiastic view (Cook et al., 2008).

The authors contend that the controversy surrounding the growing commercialization of university research arises not so much from any real conflicts between the academic and business missions and their respective research cultures as from mutual suspicions and distrust about the division of the financial benefits and the efforts entailed in a successful ‘technology transfer.’ These difficulties, and related conflicts of interest, they suggest, are resolvable by following the principles of ‘the Oxford model’ – by separating the phases of research, technology transfer and actual market exploitation of the patents, and providing a trusted intermediary operating on the lines of Isis Innovation to develop and manage relationships between academic researchers the executives of the business companies involved.

Apart from the university taking equity-ownership positions in the companies ‘spun-out’ by Isis Innovation, and the latter company taking an active role in ‘assisted’ consultancy contracts between university researchers in external parties, the arrangements described as ‘the Oxford Model’ are appear quite unexceptional in the general run of university-based technology transfer organizations (TTOs). What is remarkable about this particular article is the authors’ presentation of the problematic issues as arising from the unfortunate (and avoidable) confusion of discussions about technology transfer by the interjection of considerations about ‘the setting of priorities of the university itself.’ Their concluding message is simply this: ‘When developing technology transfer systems, the active support of senior university personnel, both researchers and administrators, is essential.’

This parochially ‘Oxonian view’ fails to confront most of the issues that have been raised in the extensive empirical research and policy discussions that economists and other social scientists in the science and technology policy field have devoted to issues arising from the growth of ‘academic patenting’, and the activities university TTOs in the US, the EU, and other OECD countries.

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References

• Cook, Tim, Baruch Blumberg, Raymond Dweck, and Tom Hockaday (2008) Commercializing University Research: Threats and Opportunities – The Oxford Model. Capitalism and Socialism, 3(1).

• David, Paul A., and J. Stanley Metcalfe, (2008) ‘Only Connect’: Academic-Business Research Collaborations and the Formation of Ecologies of Innovation. Forthcoming in: H.Etzkowitz and R.Viale (eds) Knowledge and Innovation in the Triple Helix (E. Elgar: Cheltenham, UK).