Featured
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Comment |
‘Benevolent’ patent extensions could raise billions for R&D in poorer countries
Research into vaccines, crop seeds and other innovations for low- or middle-income nations could be rewarded by offering longer patent coverage for profitable, non-essential inventions.
- Christopher B. Barrett
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Editorial |
Why the pandemic treaty risks becoming COVID-19 groundhog day
Talks are stalling, but everyone benefits when the fruits of vaccine and drugs research are shared equitably.
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Research Highlight |
Which graduate students gain patents? Gender holds an answer
PhD students with supervisors who are prolific inventors have an edge, as do male students.
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Nature Index |
European Union appeals for interdisciplinary collaboration in new funding model
Brussels hopes that getting scientists from different fields to work together on big issues will bring innovations such as viable hydrogen energy infrastructure to the market more quickly.
- Charles Ebikeme
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News |
Antibody-patent row could have far-reaching impact on biotech
The results of a US case could dictate how broad patents are, and have knock-on effects for those developing drugs.
- Heidi Ledford
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Book Review |
A crash course in biotech success — and failure
The unlikely discovery of a life-changing leukaemia drug uncovers harsh realities of profit and loss.
- Heidi Ledford
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Nature Index |
The institutions forging the strongest innovation links
Tracking patent citations and academic–corporate collaboration points to some of the pioneers in knowledge application.
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Nature Index |
How leading nations fare on applying knowledge
The countries and territories that do well in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index tend to have impressive research density.
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Career Column |
How to protect research ideas as a junior scientist
Ijeoma Opara learnt some hard lessons after getting scooped in a grant application.
- Ijeoma Opara
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News |
Donated COVID drugs start flowing to poor nations — but can’t meet demand
Pilot schemes will explore test-and-treat logistics, amid efforts to bolster meagre supplies to low- and middle-income countries.
- Heidi Ledford
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Editorial |
Why a vaccine hub for low-income countries must succeed
A new initiative aims to shift the dangerous imbalance in access to medicines, laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. It deserves support.
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News Feature |
Unseating big pharma: the radical plan for vaccine equity
Charity failed to provide adequate vaccines for the global south. Now, 15 countries are seeing whether an open-science model can end a dangerous legacy of dependency.
- Amy Maxmen
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News |
African clinical trial denied access to key COVID drug Paxlovid
Supply shortages and limits on research leave low- and middle-income countries struggling to access Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral.
- Heidi Ledford
- & Amy Maxmen
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News |
Major CRISPR patent decision won’t end tangled dispute
Fights over who invented the gene-editing technology are becoming more complex, and could carry on for years.
- Heidi Ledford
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Career Feature |
Science competitions can help to catapult your science into the real world
Innovation challenges offer valuable lessons and resources for researcher-entrepreneurs.
- Andy Tay
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Editorial |
Omicron: the global response is making it worse
The pandemic will not end while vaccine equity keeps getting pushed to the margins.
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News Explainer |
What the Moderna–NIH COVID vaccine patent fight means for research
Collaborators are locked in a high-stakes dispute over which researchers should be named as inventors on a key vaccine patent application.
- Heidi Ledford
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Career Feature |
How to turn your ideas into patents
Researchers and intellectual-property specialists offer their tips for deciding which discoveries are worth patenting, and how to do the homework needed for success.
- Andy Tay
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News Feature |
The tangled history of mRNA vaccines
Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.
- Elie Dolgin
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Editorial |
License CRISPR patents for free to share gene editing globally
Universities hold the majority of CRISPR patents. They are in a strong position to ensure that the technology is widely shared for education and research.
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Correspondence |
Waive CRISPR patents to meet food needs in low-income countries
- John van der Oost
- & Louise O. Fresco
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Editorial |
The WHO is right to call a temporary halt to COVID vaccine boosters
Richer countries should focus on ramping up vaccine supply to the billions who are still waiting for their first dose.
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Comment |
Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies
Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.
- Jathan Sadowski
- , Salomé Viljoen
- & Meredith Whittaker
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Outlook |
The Spinoff Prize 2021
Start-up companies spawned at universities are transforming research findings into commercial offerings for biomedicine and technology.
- Herb Brody
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Editorial |
A patent waiver on COVID vaccines is right and fair
Wealthier countries must join the United States, Russia and China in recognizing that everyone benefits if vaccine manufacturing is distributed evenly around the world.
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News |
In shock move, US backs waiving patents on COVID vaccines
The development from the Biden administration draws cheers from public-health researchers and ire from drugmakers.
- Amy Maxmen
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News Q&A |
Do you obey public-access mandates? Google Scholar is watching
Search-engine co-founder Anurag Acharya explains why it now tells authors when their papers should be made free to read.
- Richard Van Noorden
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Correspondence |
Pool patents to get COVID vaccines and drugs to all
- Etienne Billette de Villemeur
- , Vianney Dequiedt
- & Bruno Versaevel
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Article |
A measure of smell enables the creation of olfactory metamers
By collecting nearly 50,000 perceptual estimates of smell, a reliable physicochemical measure that links odorant structure to odorant perception at a resolution that enables the creation of olfactory metamers was derived.
- Aharon Ravia
- , Kobi Snitz
- & Noam Sobel
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Book Review |
Racism is baked into patent systems
Intellectual-property laws imagine creatorship as white, a book argues. By Shobita Parthasarathy
- Shobita Parthasarathy
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Correspondence |
Rooibos settlement omits other marginalized people
- Sarah Ives
- , Rachel Wynberg
- & Graham Dutfield
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News |
Chinese infiltration of US labs caught science agencies off guard
China has diverted US government funds to bolster its military and economic aims, a US Senate panel says.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Editorial |
Global lessons from South Africa’s rooibos compensation agreement
Indigenous communities must be compensated for their knowledge and treated as equals in research.
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News |
Foreign interference under the spotlight at Australian universities
The government has acted following concerns about China's influence on campuses.
- Dyani Lewis
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Editorial |
Diversity and international collaboration should not become casualties of anti-espionage policies
US universities have a responsibility to defuse the climate of suspicion hanging over their Chinese and Chinese American communities.
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Spotlight |
AI researchers in China want to keep the global-sharing culture alive
Despite obstacles, such as an ongoing trade war between China and the United States, artificial-intelligence researchers are working to ensure they can collaborate internationally.
- Sarah O’Meara
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Outline |
Biosimilars: mimicking biological drugs
With the patents on many biological drugs soon to expire, the biosimilars revolution is about to shift into top gear.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Outline |
Bring on the biosimilars
Some of the most effective modern drugs are complex biological molecules. As their patents expire, drug developers are fashioning copycat versions that could make such therapies cheaper and more broadly available.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Career Guide |
Germany’s attitude to start-up firms is undergoing profound change
The country has been slow to welcome start-up science culture, but the scene looks set to take off.
- Andrew Curry
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Career Guide |
How Germany is winning at turning its research to commercial application
The country is using science for economic benefit.
- Neil Savage
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Comment |
Use the patent system to regulate gene editing
Governments should use patents to shape the deployment of CRISPR–Cas9 as they have done for past technologies, argues Shobita Parthasarathy.
- Shobita Parthasarathy
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News |
Pivotal CRISPR patent battle won by Broad Institute
Team from the University of California, Berkeley, loses appeal over coveted gene-editing technology.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Rush to protect lucrative antibody patents kicks into gear
A federal court decision has left universities and companies working to preserve intellectual property rights worth billions.
- Heidi Ledford
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Books & Arts |
The forgotten founder of ornithology
Elizabeth Yale relishes a biography of Francis Willughby, a seventeenth-century polymath with a gift for collaboration.
- Elizabeth Yale
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Career Guide |
How private-sector research is changing China
The country has transformed from a low-cost manufacturing base to a centre of knowledge creation.
- Flynn Murphy
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Toolbox |
Need a paper? Get a plug-in
A collection of web-browser plug-ins is making the scholarly literature more discoverable.
- Dalmeet Singh Chawla
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News |
Bitter CRISPR patent war intensifies
Gene-editing pioneers prepare for next stage of intellectual-property disputes in the United States and Europe.
- Heidi Ledford
Research funders must join the fight for equal access to medicines