KEI and UNU-MERIT Announce Award for Best Paper on Monetary Prizes to Stimulate Medical R&D14 november 2007 How can society ensure that knowledge goods, which are both costly to create and potentially non-rival in use, can be shared freely? There is little doubt that the current approach to rewarding the development of new medicines or diagnostic devices has severe deficiencies. Patent enforced monopolies often lead to high prices. Critics also say that this system often fails to stimulate investment in areas of public interest and priority. The prize system provides an appealing solution by encouraging new approaches to this thorny issue. If the incentive for innovation can be divorced from the product's consumer price, then knowledge goods — including the R&D for a new medicine — can be placed in the public domain immediately, so that competition among suppliers leads to low prices and greater access to new medical inventions. Prizes can be implemented in many different ways. For donors and governments in particular, prizes might offer an alternative to marketing monopolies as the reward for successful investments in R&D. Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and UNU-MERIT are calling for papers on the use of monetary prizes as an alternative mechanism to stimulate private investments in R&D. Participation is open to anyone. Winners will be selected by a jury of high-profile experts. The deadline for contributions is February 15, 2008. Papers should be between four and 20 pages, and must be submitted under a licence allowing unlimited distribution, such as an appropriate Creative Commons licence. Awards:
Successful papers will deal with one or more of the following questions: 1.Relation to exclusive rights of a patent: Should prizes be considered as a voluntary or non-voluntary alternative to the exclusive rights now associated with the patent system, or as a complementary reward? 2.Valuation: How does one determine the size of prizes? 3.Push vs. pull: Where to use research grants ("push"), where to prefer prizes ("pull") to finance drug development? 4.Sustainable financing: Where should the prize money come from, and will the prospect of prizes be credible? 5.Follow-on innovation: How will prizes deal with the need for incentives for follow-on innovation? 6.Transition: How can the transition from the current monopoly-based system be organized? For questions and submissions, please send email to Malini Aisola and Karsten Gerloff at <prizeprize@merit.unu.edu>. |