The argument that the current patent system discourages collaborative innovation among partners — hurting scientific, technical, economic, and societal progress — is gaining steam. At the core of this is the swift emergence of, “open innovation,” described by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 [Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press]. In a concise and compelling 2010 paper, Prof. Bronwyn Hall of UC Berkeley and United Nations University in Maastricht, described how the open innovation movement has influenced some large companies, including IBM and Microsoft, to change how they handle the protection and sharing of intellectual property. She concluded by showing that in the leading-edge world of social media, …

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