Do US Patent Incentives Need To Change To Get The ‘Cancer Moonshot’ Off The Ground? - Intellectual Property Watch

"The Moonshot is a partnership with the public, and significant public funds are being invested in the project. It is not so simple, however, to argue that information generated under the Moonshot can be ordered to be shared. When private companies work together on this project, they won’t just be sharing their data but sharing how they collect that data. Much of this information falls under the category of trade secrets, which companies guard closely....[Jacob] Sherkow advocates for prohibiting information that could be shared from eligibility as trade secrets....This would be coupled with a broadening of patentability criteria, said Sherkow. “Broadening up patentable subject matter has its disadvantages, to be sure, but in something like a public-private partnership, where the name of the game is creating information and then disclosing it to people, that’s definitely better than having the taxpayer pay for private trade secrets that vest in a for-profit company,” he said...."