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Sandeen, Sharon K. --- "The Value of Irrationality in the IP Equation" [2010] ELECD 654; in Flanagan, Anne; Montagnani, Lillà Maria (eds), "Intellectual Property Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Intellectual Property Law

Editor(s): Flanagan, Anne; Montagnani, Lillà Maria

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446274

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: The Value of Irrationality in the IP Equation

Author(s): Sandeen, Sharon K.

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

3. The value of irrationality in the IP
equation
Sharon K. Sandeen

1. INTRODUCTION

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, while working for the Organisation
Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), Tim Berners-Lee
invented the World Wide Web and, in the process, forever changed the
way that we communicate and conduct business.1 Like other inventors,
Berners-Lee could have sought patent protection but, instead, he made the
conscious decision to freely distribute his invention so that it could benefit
the world.2
Berners-Lee is not the first inventor to make the decision to contribute
a valuable, ground-breaking invention to the public. Dr. Jonas Salk did
the same thing when he developed a vaccine for polio in 1955, leading to
the subsequent near eradication of a horrible and dreaded disease.3 The
famous American inventor and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, made
a similar decision with respect to all of his inventions, including the
important Franklin stove.4


1 For a history of how the World Wide Web was created, including the contri-

butions of other individuals such as Robert Cailliau, see James Gillies and Robert
Cailliau, How the Web Was Born (OUP, Oxford 2000).
2 Id., at 209 and 234.
3 In a famous interview with Edward R. Morrow, when asked `Who owns the

patent on the vaccine?,' Dr. Salk responded: `Well, the people, I would say. There
is no patent. Could you patent the sun?' See It Now (CBS television broadcast, 12
April 1955).
...