"Holding-Ups" refers to exploiting a powerful position - in the terms of this paper, when a public sector researcher has accessed a component technology from a private firm on a 'research use only' basis, only to have permission for commercial use denied or significantly delayed. The issue is a significant one for agricultural biotechnology applications because each uses up to a dozen components, many of which belong to the private sector. Research success rates are such that it is impractical to negotiate commercialization agreements ahead of time for each component for each product, yet once a useful product has been found, the researcher is at the mercy of the owners to agree to reasonable terms. Sometimes that does not happen, or negotiations are protracted, so that public sector researchers are questioning their role in developing useful products. The extent of the problem has not been well documented, but hearsay accounts suggest it is a significant consideration for many.
The paper considers a number of ways the public sector can get around this ongoing problem, from outright willful infringement to seeking a public granting of a license, to replicating the bottleneck technologies. None appears feasible, in part because the public sector is dependent on the private for funding and access to proprietary materials, so no university alone wishes to take on a major company. Replication does signal firms that the public sector has some choices, choices which will reduce the value of the private sector technologies, but is unattractive because it takes time and costs money. Is the public sector then stuck in an unhappy position?
Here it is proposed that what universities cannot do separately they can do jointly - a joint boycott of firms which thwart reasonable public sector requests to commercialize developments using private component technologies. What is needed is an incentive, a mechanism, to keep the institutions cooperating, not acting separately for short term benefit. The Rockefeller Foundation Rice Biotechnology Program is suggested as a model. Under that system, an entity (like Rockefeller) provides special compensatory grants for cooperating institutions, but none for those which defect. The system would have to be used judiciously only for egregious problems while relying on the reality that private biotech firms are dependent on the public sector for key research, and can ill afford a complete loss of access.