Foldit Ownership Policy

[Seth Cooper]

We'll soon be having a chat about the Foldit ownership policy.

If you are unable to make it to the chat at that time, please post your questions/comments here.

[GlaciusCool]

That which is created by the public should remain in the hands of the public for the benefit of all human kind. Scientific discovery - even if it's just a molecular recipe - should be used by and available to all who seek the knowledge.

[mbinfield]

What area of intellectual property law would apply? As I understand it, data itself is not normally protected under US law. Recipes might be patentable (under the same logic as software) but what basis exists for owning a particular structure prediction? And would design puzzles be different in that respect from prediction puzzles.

I agree that to the extent IP applies, public domain or some sort of GNU or Creative Commons license is probably appropriate. That way if anything we produce turns out to be valuable, we've avoided in advance any fights over who owns something that was developed collaboratively.

[Seth Cooper]

After the discussion in chat last week, here is a draft of the ownership clause. Let us know if you have any feedback.

All significant scientific discoveries (such as structures, algorithms, etc) made in-game will be made publicly available. Discoveries will be governed by US patent law and handled by the University of Washington Center for Commercialization. Individual players who contributed to the discovery will be considered inventors for the purposes of discovery ownership.

[AsDawnBreaks]

Great. I love it.

[Wildcat777]

I think the discussion about patents for players is nosens.
How much percent you have to calculate for the server work, when you get server prediction and you use it?
How much percent you have to calculate for each script which were made from another gamer?
How much percent you have to calculate for each script which were made from another gamer and you changed it?
When the calculation includes the scripts and you took a script, copied it to an external editor and created a new script in foldit with only copy the script from another gamer/scripter into foldit and you use this script: how you can comprend this situation? There is no parent link for the original script.
My opinion is: David Baker Lab should get all patent rights. In the other way, when a gamer/scripter can get any parts of a patent or the whole patent rights you can forget the idea of foldit. No gamer/scripter will help any other gamer and noone will share any script.

[Wildcat777]

If Foldit will gives some monetary the idea of Foldit is to forget. A lot of gamers/scripters will only work for their own benefit. In a group no solution will be shared, cause probably the best one will get this benefit. When the best one don't get the benefit and every involved gamer/scripter for this solution will get parts of the benefit: how is to calculate the partial benefit? With points? The last one of evolver gets on parts of 10000's or so? So the (maybe good/best) gamers will stay for much longer time on a puzzle. a.e. benefit will be one million dollar: max points are 10,000 -> one point will be 100 dollar. What's about the first 9,999 points, which were much more easy to do?
Calculation of benefit with time? Anybody run after he/she did evolve someonce solution and will stay on this puzzle until the puzzle expires.
Cause therefore the oportunity to get some benefit will be higher. Similary problem like with points.
And what's more: good gamers will spend more time with one solution and don't try other solutions -> therefore less variations of folded solutions will be generated.
I have no idea how the benefit can be calculated without any backcoupling for loss of quality and quantity.
What's about solutions, which are the best one in compare with the nature, but the gamer wasn't able or didn't spend so much time to improve it up to the best 50 solutions which are checked by DB labs. Therefore: Has DB labs to check each solution? Also when it's not in the best 50? Has DB labs enough servertime to check all the solutions?
What's about 2 solutions from 2 different gamers, which are very similary and are the best with compare to nature? They did the puzzle with different scripts and moves and made almost the same solution. DB labs will improve this solutions and get back from the program they use, that the second range solution is the best? Has the first range solution also to get some monetary?
When DB labs will improve this or find any other possibility to evaluate the (all?) solutions with another valuation method, I'm not against for any benefit.

[Wildcat777]

PS:
And what's more: any other lab finds a better solution for the protein. Have the gamers, who became some benefit payback the monetary they got?

[AsDawnBreaks]

As for scripts, you just need to keep track of scripts used (there is a feedback for that somewhere) and perhaps the points gained be the scripts.

[Tlaloc]

I release all my scripts using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). This basically requires that users of my scripts keep attribution, not use it for commercial purposes, and release works based on mine using a similar licensing agreement.

If some commercial entity (say some biotech company) wants to use my algorithms, then they can contact me and we'll work something out.

I think this is pretty fair to everyone and a model for a good ownership policy for scripts.