October 24 is celebrated as World Polio Day. Jonas Salk inventor Polio Vaccine, but he refused to patent the Vaccine.
But that does not others shouldn’t. This decision cost him and the related research institutes $7 billion. This money could have been used to fund further research.
According to some reports, the lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had looked into patenting the Salk Vaccine and concluded that it could not be patented because of prior art – that it would not be considered a patentable invention by standards of the day.
Newspaper headlines about polio vaccine tests (April 13, 1955).
References:
- http://www.biotech-now.org/public-policy/patently-biotech/2012/01/the-real-reason-why-salk-refused-to-patent-the-polio-vaccine-a-myth-in-the-making
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/08/09/how-much-money-did-jonas-salk-potentially-forfeit-by-not-patenting-the-polio-vaccine/