2) Motivation

The mechanisms currently available to fund basic science are excessively slow and are wholly inadequate to address the complex time-critical problems we are likely to face in the 21st century.

This inadequacy arises from an enigma. On the one hand, the very notion of treating scientific knowledge as property is not compatible with the spirit of scientific investigation.

On the other hand, international intellectual property rights are essential to the free market development of technology.

Without such protection, intellectual property may be exploited without due compensation or acknowledgment to its author.