Danish University And Industry Work Together On Open Science Platform Whose Results Will All Be Patent-Free | Techdirt

"Here on Techdirt, we write a lot about patents. Mostly, it's about their huge downsides -- the stupid patents that should never have been awarded, or the parasitic patent trolls that feed off companies doing innovative work. The obvious solution is to get rid of patents, but the idea is always met with howls of derision, as if the entire system of today's research and development would collapse, and a new dark age would be upon us. It's hard to refute that claim with evidence to the contrary because most people -- other than a few brave souls like Elon Musk -- are reluctant to find out what happens if they don't cling to patents. Against that background, it's great to see Aarhus University in Denmark announce a new open science initiative that will eschew patents on researchers' work completely:

The platform has been established with funds from the Danish Industry Foundation and it combines basic research with industrial innovation in a completely new way, ensuring that industry and the universities get greater benefit from each other's knowledge and technology.

University researchers and companies collaborate across the board to create fundamental new knowledge that is constantly made available to everyone -- and which nobody may patent. On the contrary, everyone is subsequently freely able to use the knowledge to develop and patent their own unique products.

According to Aarhus University, Danish industry loves it:

The idea of collaborating in such a patent-free zone has aroused enormous interest in industry and among companies that otherwise use considerable resources on protecting their intellectual property rights."