Public Research for Private Gain
In a unanimous vote last month, the Regents of the University of California created a corporate entity that, if spread to all UC campuses as some regents envision, promises to further privatize scientific research produced by taxpayer-funded laboratories. The entity, named Newco for the time being, also would block a substantial amount of UC research from being accessible to the public, and could reap big profits for corporations and investors that have ties to the well-connected businesspeople who will manage it… Newfield of UC Santa Barbara said that Berkeley and UCLA currently have “different visions” when it comes to tech transfer. “The contrast is between a narrow revenue goal for commercializing science and a public interest goal for getting science into the world,” he said. The irony of something like Newco, he continued, is that managing university research to maximize patenting and corporate startups doesn’t even appear to increase revenues for the university.
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by Darwin BondGraham, The East Bay Express.