[skosuri]

IMO & IANAL: IP of one form or another is probably necessary and beneficial for bio. If you make an invention, and it's trivially copied, then you need some protection to commercialize.

There are a few options:

1. patents -> they are expensive to get, and are medium term, but can be bad if they are trivial patents -> the biggest issue here is the non-obviousness part seems broken (as it often is in tech).

2. copyright -> easy to get, last forever , but don't cover ideas, which is very good. That said, copyrights could have much worse consequences if they are taken advantage of (b/c of ease of obtainment, and length), and of course they will.

3. MTA -> material transfer agreements probably are not viable for much longer... DNA and cells are too easy to write and edit now.

4. Secrecy -> This seems like a bad idea.

5. Something brand new -> I could think of individual policies that seem like good ideas, but I worry that I haven't thought about the ways that those policies could be captured and exploited... it seems like we are more likely to be at a better place with less risk if we can work on making the existing system better.

[hutzlibu]

6. open-source and crowd-funding research

Requires a change of mind in the masses, though, to make this work for big, longterm projects ...

But I am positive, that we will see more of it, in the future ...