3) Knowledge Capital Formation

The BCNGroup intends to generate and manage wealth to the greatest extent possible given the above constraints.

This wealth will consist of two distinct types of knowledge capital:

(i) Public knowledge wealth and

(ii) The BCN inventory of intellectual capital.

3a) Public Knowledge Wealth:

Public wealth is created by placing the results of investigations of contributing scientists into a knowledge base. Practitioners may apply this knowledge in whatever manner they deem appropriate. Such knowledge will be secured for the purpose of insuring complete public access to basic discoveries..

Common law states that when results from a scientific investigation are publicly disclosed, previous to filing a government application to recognize private ownership of the intellectual property, the results are forever made part of the public domain. In this case, no one has legal authority to restrict the use of this property and the application for private ownership should be denied. In simple terms this means that if knowledge is published at a time when no legal protection exists for individual ownership of that knowledge, then that knowledge is owned in common by the public body.

This principle in common law is being constantly eroded. To insure that this common law principle is not further degraded, the BCNGroup will follow each BCNGroup public disclosure of new scientific knowledge with specific procedures that are designed to clarify what are allowable targets for the creation of private intellectual property.

The BCNGroup will help identify well-defined access points for third party development of new technologies. A consortium relationship will be maintained that is designed to transfer scientific work into technology, but with reasonable attribution to the origins of the scientific work.

3b) The BCN Inventory of Intellectual Capital:

The BCNGroup will establish a new independent science funding process that will generate wealth by entering into agreements with its member scientists and third party developers. In this way, BCNGroup scientists will work with entrepreneurs in migrating theories from a scientific investigation (proof of principle) phase to a development (proof of product, or prototyping) phase.

The resulting financial wealth will provide an increasing flow of capital to the science community and will be held in trust by the BCNGroup. The Scientific Council of the BCNGroup will manage the redistribution of this wealth in part by contributing to the health of the science community in the form of yearly prizes for Research Excellence and Technology Innovation.

Regardless of how much scientific data the BCNGroup publishes, the proof of product phase resides in the personal abilities of an individual or team of scientists.

To ensure that maximal benefit of a discovery is extended to society, third party agreements will stipulate a time threshold for product introduction (this condition is frequently applied in technology transfer agreements between government and industry). Under the agreement, if a product is not introduced within a specified time frame, the non-disclosure and non-compete restrictions are lifted and the scientist(s) are free to enter into agreements with other third parties to commercialize the technology. The same agreements can be made with respect to specific market sectors.