The discussion of the underlying core principle of open innovation -- free access to existing knowledge to reuse this information for new problem solving in another domain -- interferes very often with the existing regimes of Intellectual Property Law, which are one of the main hurdles of open innovation. Thus, the new report 'Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness' by the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a business-led public policy group, got my interest. In this group, 200 large US corporations (!) demand more openness of intellectual property. This is a very important debate, and if you want to benefit from open innovation, you should care about it!
Here is a summary of the report by PR Newswire :
Increased openness in the creation of computer software and other digital information products is needed to foster further innovation and economic growth for both the United States, and for the global economy, warns CED in a new report."Open standards are needed for digital technology to continue to develop and create economic growth in the information age," said Paul Horn, Senior Vice President Research, IBM Corporation. "Additionally, open innovation is propelling change in commerce beyond the borders of software and information technology, even into physical goods," Mr. Horn continued.
The report calls openness "an underlying technical and philosophical tenet of the expansion of electronic commerce" that will "cause transformations in the economy and society." Digitization of information and the growth of the Internet have profoundly expanded the capacity for openness, which can be viewed largely as a function of the accessibility and responsiveness (meaning the ability of anyone to make modifications) of a work or process.
Recommendations of the report include:OPEN STANDARDS: Governments should encourage the development and use of open standards through processes as open to participation and contribution as possible. The DCC believes that the participation of civil society would be beneficial in the formation of standards with important social consequences. Support for open standards has grown dramatically in recent years, but issues surrounding intellectual property claims threaten their development. Perhaps most troubling, firms have a perverse incentive to wait until an open standard is widely utilized before asserting an intellectual property claim, so as to maximize revenues from licensing or from damages. The DCC recommends that incentives be created to induce the early disclosure of intellectual property claims, and that consideration be given to progressively limiting recovery by a firm asserting infringement as time elapses from the adoption of a standard. ...
OPEN INNOVATION: The combination of the internet and the growing importance of digital information products is changing even the organization of creative enterprises and enabling new processes of innovation. Perhaps most striking is the extraordinary increase in "peer production" of digital information products. Many, if not most, of the pages accessible on the World Wide Web are posted by individuals with no expectation of monetary gain. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the result of contributions from thousands of individuals, as are the buyer and seller reviews on eBay. "Open science" is making scientific information available well beyond the subscribers of traditional scientific journals.
To foster open innovation, the report recommends federally funded, unclassified research should be made broadly available. The CED recommends that any legislation or regulation regarding intellectual property rights be weighed with a presumption against the granting of new rights. The burden of proof should be on proponents of new rights to demonstrate with rigorous analysis the necessity of such an extension, because of the benefits to society of further innovation through greater access to technology. Finally, the Council suggests that the National Science Foundation fund research into alternative compensation methods, similar to those created to facilitate the growth of radio, to reward creators of digital information products and accommodate the changes brought about by the digitization and growth of the Internet."
The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report_ecom_openstandards.pdf
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