[okfn-discuss] Businesses unwilling to share data, but keen on government doing it

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 12:15 AM, Julian Todd <julian at goatchurch.org.uk>wrote:

> I've discovered that in the oil and gas sector, essentially all the
> data is open and public.  No one conceals that they have found a
> productive well or how much was there.  Have a look round the data
> available from Norway
>    http://www.npd.no/en/news/Exploration-drilling-results/
>
> There's equivalent UK data, but it's much less structured.  Drilling
> holes is expensive enough that the industry cannot afford to waste
> time not using the very best data -- even if it does mean larger
> companies can't dump on smaller companies by withholding useful data
> from them.
>

This is useful material for us to show the value of collaboration - perhaps
we should keep an adhoc set of stories

>
> I'd draw a very close analogy between oil exploration and
> pharmaceuticals -- no one knows exactly where all the oil fields are,
> just as no one knows which chemicals work as effective drugs.  There's
> a large element of detective work, derived from the experimental data
> (the more the better).  They bid for the rights to exploit the fields.
>
> The reason why the pharmaceutical industry can get away with their
> structure of waste is they can afford it and defend it.  No one can
> challenge it, because there is no common space.  Every pharmaceutical
> company could be assigning its 100 research scientists into the same
> dry area while avoiding completely wide open untapped sectors, but you
> can't make it visible in the way you can with oil rigs on a map.
>

I think there are objective differences. The primary  IP in pharma is
patenting a lead compound and the compounds round it. I've been in areas
where the competition has beaten us by a week to file the patent. And one
public disclosure of any compound can invalidate the patent. So I'm more
sympathetic to defending secrecy on the primary invention - but not on the
background knowledge

>
>
-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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