ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE 



expense, it should belong to the public; and there is no more direct 

 way of making it public property than by publishing it as soon as the 

 facts are clear. Publication would preclude patenting and, with 

 certain precautions to be discussed below, would prevent the results of 

 public science from becoming private property. But, by the same 

 token, the results of private science would remain pri\'ate, subject to 

 patent or other ownership rights and restrictions. 



A division of this sort already exists. Most agricultural research 

 in the United States is done at public expense and results are freely 

 published and can be consulted and used by anyone. The greatest 

 change in American agriculture in the present century, the introduction 

 of crossbred or hybrid corn, resulted chiefly from cooperative research 

 between the United States Department of Agriculture and the State 

 Agricultural Experiment Stations. The results were quickly utilized 

 by private seed companies, none of which was able to obtain a patent 

 or found a monopoly on it. Crossbred corn therefore came very 

 quickly into general use and its benefits were soon spread over all agri- 

 cultural communities. 



Side by side with this development, it was possible for private 

 individuals and corporations to produce and patent new varieties of 

 other plants, such as roses, which could be propagated asexually. The 

 ownership of new rose varieties is thus (in general) private; but the new 

 method of corn breeding belongs to the public. 



The question of property rights need then be faced only when 

 new values are created by publicly supported research; and the basic 

 policy stated above — that is, free publication of the results of public 

 research — need not interfere with existing arrangements under which 

 private research operates. As a matter of fact, the more fundamental 

 the research in the sense that the more general the truth that arises 

 from it, the less will property questions arise. It is hard to find a 

 patentable value in the general theory of relativity, or in the periodic 

 system of the elements, or in the theory of the gene. It is the fate and 

 the function of such ideas to become common property, and no man- 

 made rules should be allowed to interfere with their free circulation. 

 It is usually only the specific applications of general ideas which be- 

 come subject to property restriction; and public policy can only aim 

 at preventing such restriction from interfering with the advance of 

 science or with the spread of the benefits to the people. 



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