Principles for disseminating scientific innovations | Broad Institute

"As an academic non-profit research institute [associated with Harvard and MIT], Broad recognizes the unique role that such institutions play in propelling the biomedical ecosystem by exploring fundamental questions and working on risky, early-stage projects that often lack clear economic return.

To maximize its impact, our work (including discoveries, data, tools, technologies, knowledge, and intellectual property) should be made readily available for use, at no cost, by other academic and non-profit research institutions....

With respect to commercial licensing, our most important consideration is maximizing public benefit.

• In most cases, we believe that this goal is best accomplished through non-exclusive licensing, which allows many companies to use innovations and thus compete to bring to market products incorporating them.
• In some cases, we recognize that an exclusive license to an innovation may be necessary to justify the level of private investment required to develop a product and bring it to market. (An example is the composition-of-matter of drug. Without an exclusive license, a company would be reluctant to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a clinical trial to demonstrate safety and efficacy, because competitors could subsequently ‘free-ride’ on their results to bring the same product to market.)

In each case, we evaluate the justification for exclusivity and seek to limit the scope of exclusivity...."