Page:The digital public domain.pdf/124

Rh Arguably, these options put research commons initiatives in a more evolutionary perspective and suggest that different institutional settings may compete and coexist depending on the technological and economic changes as well as on the evolution of agents’ beliefs. Further, this option implies that the sustainability of research commons may be affected by agents’ adaptive behaviours, collective action and path-dependent dynamics.

In summary, this chapter presents the main economic issues that represent fields of contention among legal and economic scholars when analysing the impact of the expansion of property rights on the access and production of knowledge and information resources. Crucially, the same issues represent the most challenging research paths to deepen our understanding of the prospective viability and success of research commons.

Here we will look at the emergence and rationale of contractually-constructed research commons; we will present the most relevant economic arguments concerning the emergence and sustainability of these organisational forms; finally we will propose an evolutionary perspective that should inspire the design of emerging research commons.


 * 1. Emergence and rationale of contractually-constructed research commons

Contractually-constructed research commons represent emerging institutional forms for the management of knowledge and scientific material. Against the alleged privatisation pressures that have adversely affected research and innovation activities, these initiatives aim to introduce standard contractual forms, which contemplate non-exclusive use and access to information resources and research inputs that are covered by some forms of exclusive rights.

Contractually-constructed research commons have come out in the last decade in many different fields of scientific production and innovation. For instance, Reichman and Uhlir have been engaged in proposing a contractually-reconstructed commons for scientific data, as a response to enhanced copyright protection and new sui generis protection for databases. As for genetic resources for food and agriculture, in 2001 states signed the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources