open-source

Biotech innovations pop up every day. From medicines developed by large companies to ingenious solutions worked out by individuals in university labs, new technologies are poised to enter the marketplace. The question is, are patents helping or hurting this process? “Patents are essential to bring biotechnology innovations from everyone — not just well-funded corporations — to the people,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Without patents, the biotech marketplace in basic science takes on the nature of something like an old boys’ club in which personal attributes such as fame, prestige, and even gender and race, govern what exchanges take place; and the addition of patents gives many more people a way to play in that game.”

A router in the new Open Network Laboratory, funded by NSF.A novel networking service has been made available to the research community by computer scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, enabling researchers and students remote, free use of the latest networking technology. Ultimately, the new Open Network Laboratory (ONL )can lead to innovations that can expand the capability of the Internet and other networking environments, said its director, Jonathan S. Turner, Ph.D., Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering, and professor of computer science and engineering at WUSTL.