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Sharing does not come naturally to humans. Anyone who has spent time with young children sees that the concept of "mine!" develops early. Caregivers typically work hard to teach children when they should share and when it is acceptable to keep objects or ideas to themselves. This tension persists with increasingly higher stakes as humans mature. Adults are good at finding reasons why others should generously share their toys and are equally articulate at providing excuses for not reciprocating. This is not a trivial pointmany wars have been fought because of disagreement over property rights.

Societies acknowledge the need to carefully define and protect property of all types, and this activity consumes many who work in our legal system. Increasingly, the most valuable properties are not tangible items sold in stores or shipped across the sea in the holds of ships. Instead, they are the fruits of labor of creative people including scientists and technologists (and musicians, artists, and many others). Because ideas and research materials generally cannot be guarded under lock and key and still be used to advance our knowledge and create products of economic value, they are protected by the systems of copyright and patent law.

As much as anyone, those of us doing scientific discovery really do stand on the shoulders of giantsbreakthroughs occur at an increasing rate because there is so much information and materials to build upon (prior art, in legalese). Overall scientific progress is fastest when knowledge and materials are freely accessible in the literature, in stock centers, from colleagues, and from commercial vendors at reasonable prices.

But there is a fundamental problem: On the one hand, I can make the most rapid progress in my own research if I have unconstrained and immediate access to your biomaterials and ideas. On the other hand, you have an obligation to the people in your group and other collaborators to make sure that they can accomplish their research goals without undue pressure from me and my colleagues. You also have a legal obligation to your employer to protect the potential monetary value of the intellectual property that you have generated. Clearly, this is a reciprocal arrangementyour research would progress fastest by knowing all that is going on in my research, yet I have obligations to my employer, students, and collaborators.

This tension takes on a greater dimension if you or I are employed by a for-profit institution or are doing research sponsored by a company. The concepts don't change muchyou still want to make the fastest progress possible, and you have explicit legal obligations to the employer. However, unlike the not-for-profit institution, which generally places a high value on scholarship and training, the corporation is only successful if it can convert its know-how into commercially valuable products, pay its employees, and provide value to investors. Sharing has an unacceptably high cost if it prevents your employer from marketing a valuable product because it cedes rights to its own intellectual property. In addition, it would take a crystal ball for corporate scientists and business people to predict which disclosures would be safe and which ones will compromise the company's future freedom to operate. The fear of the unknown generally mutes a corporation's willingness to take risks.

This situation sometimes leads to the public sector repeating work done in industry. A recent example is the corn and soybean expressed sequence tag sequencing projects that were undertaken at great cost to taxpayers despite the existence of large amounts of data in the private sector. Why do companies place such a high premium on gene sequences? One explanation is found in a fundamental difference between plant and pharmaceutical biotechnology products. In medicine, genes and their products are usually targets for therapeutic screens and not products in themselves. In contrast, plant biotechnology strives to identify genes that will play a central role in creation of valuable traits through transgenesis or directed breeding. Therefore, agricultural biotechnology companies feel a stronger sense of urgency to protect the intellectual property that will be essential to their future germplasm. A greater understanding of the different perspectives held by industrial and academic scientists could promote future sharing across the divide or at least a better appreciation for what the other is trying to accomplish.

So far, we have only discussed the roles of researchers and employers, but there are many others who have something to say about the sharing of biological information and materials. The funding agencies have broad responsibilities: to the larger scientific community, to the lawmakers who allocate their research budgets, and to the citizens who expect that the money will be spent wisely to improve their lives. The granting agency's impact is likely to be greatest if the fruits of your labors are widely disseminated, but funding agencies must respect the legal rights of their grantees and not prevent commercialization of the science that they fund.

Organizations that exist to disseminate scientific information also have a voice in how we share the biological materials and data that are described in their journals, books, and on their Web sites. For example, the Publications Committee of the American Society of Plant Biologists and editorial boards of Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell work together to define the rules by which authors must abide to publish in these journals (see http://www.plantphysiol.org/misc/ifora.shtml#policies to read the policies for sharing that contributors to Plant Physiology must agree to). Because these publishers have different missionsfor profit versus not for profit, broad distribution versus niche markets, etc.they tend to have very different points of view on how much sharing of data and materials is required for publication and under what legal terms.

The availability of biological information and materials also impacts a variety of nongovernmental organizations. For example, the ability of nongovernmental organizations to promote the use of technologies to better the lives of people in developing countries is strongly influenced by the availability and cost of intellectual property.

Over the coming months, Plant Physiology will publish more than a dozen Editor's Choice articles on the topic of Sharing of Biological Data and Materials. These papers cover a wide range of topics. To kick off this series, in this issue we reprint the executive summary of a report on this topic by a National Academy of Sciences panel. In the coming months, we will hear from experts in intellectual property law about how the major international patent systems work, the importance and pitfalls of material transfer agreements, and useful information about how IP in databases is protected even when you as a user do not explicitly execute an agreement. There will be articles that describe sharing from the point of view of academic and industrial scientists, university technology transfer professionals, and funding agencies. Those who run stock centers and databases will describe the multiple roles that these institutions play. Finally, several individuals who are involved in making technologies available to end users in agriculture will share their knowledge and some advice.

This is an extremely complex and interesting outcome of our science where cutting-edge research, international law, commercial interests, and humanitarian efforts converge. I have learned a tremendous amount in working with experts in the field to define the scope of the series and convince people to contribute. I hope that you benefit from these articles and enjoy them.