Once Again Steven Chu Rattles the Cage of International Cooperation. (April 8, 2009)

TFW has mentioned in the recent past that physics Nobel Laureate and US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is good copy and once again he hasn't disappointed.

Now, ScienceInsider reports that when visiting the Brookhaven National Laboratory a couple of weeks ago Dr Chu, referring for the need for international collaboration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, told reporters: "It's like all countries becoming allies against this common foe, which is the energy problem... By very collaborative, I mean share all intellectual property as much as possible."

Then right on cue out from the woodwork rockets Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner: "Sharing intellectual property rights is exactly the wrong approach... Why would anybody invest in anything that they would have to just give away?"

So much for open access software -- but we digress.

Dan Charles, writing for ScienceInsider says: "This exchange raises an interesting question: When the U.S. government funds research on energy efficiency at national laboratories, universities, and private companies, who gets to own the resulting inventions? Currently, those institutions are free to license such technologies to the highest bidder. According to a 2007 report by John Barton, an expert on intellectual-property law at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California, most governments around the world also tend to license such technologies exclusively to their own domestic companies. Barton, however, says it's time for rich nations to 'forgo their national favoritism' and make sure valuable technologies get to where they are needed."