At 08:48 AM 7/24/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Karl Auerbach wrote:
>
>> Anyway, there are merits on both sides of the see-saw. (I still see the
>> balance as being that NSI was merely admistering a government database.
>> But its a balance that apparently others who were close to the situation
>> at the time of the formation of the Cooperative Agreement see otherwise.)
>>
>> --karl--
>
>Another interesting research issue is whether it was a government asset in
the first
>place. It wasn't exclusively for the benefit of the government since
plenty of
>non-governmental parties were also using it. Even if you take the
approach that it
>was an administrative task, and not research, it isn't clear that the
government ever
>had any obligation to perform the task in the first place.
>
>Diane Cabell
>http://www.mama-tech.com
>Fausett, Gaeta & Lund, LLP
>Boston, MA
>
Don't think this follows. What's involved is the creation of information,
and of
course before that information gets created, there is nothing there to "own."
When the government seeks to have information created, it is almost never
"for the benefit of the government": cures for cancer that come out of
research
contracts financed by the government are sought not for the benefit of the
government but rather for the benefit of those whom the government serves,
the people. And no, the government does not have any inherent obligation to
seek a cure for cancer. But it does, because we tell it to, and whatever
comes
out of the research that we paid for, we own -- through the government. What
the government thus IS obliged to do is make that information available to us,
i.e., to haul NSI's butt into court and take the data away from them.
(There is a significant difference between such data base information and the
results of scientific research, however. Patentable research results that come
out of Federally sponsored university research come to be owned by the
university, but for a distinct reason: commercialization could not occur in
the
absence of some private company having a profit motive so as to gear up
and go into production, and the only way that can occur is that if the result
is protected by a patent whereby there is temporarily no competition and
hence a profit can be made. The university licenses the private company,
both it and the university make money, but the bottom line is that the
research
results are put to use for the benefit of the public that paid for them. That
whole scenario is inapplicable to the domain name data base in the hands
of NSI, since there is no "gearing up for production" which requires there to
be a profit motive involved: the data are there, we citizens paid for it,
so we
get it.)
Bill Lovell
