Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_205_библиотеки_им_акад_М_И_Перельмана

Concern about intellectual property violations in the use of scales and structured diagnostic interviews is growing. The extent of this problem is massive. Many soft ware companies have profited by using the intellectual property of scale developers without permission and enriched themselves at the owners’ expense and without their knowledge. Several universities, health care organizations, and government agencies have also used and posted on their websites the intellectual property of scale developers without permission. Some of these violations are due to lack of training or awareness, some are due to sloppiness or not having policies and procedures in place to reduce the likelihood of these transgressions, and some are due to outright mis chief on the part of the perpetrators. My own experience is that most of the perpetra­tors are not in foreign countries, as is popularly believed, but are within the United States. Pharmaceutical companies, in my experience, are by far the most adherent to correct procedure in this arena. Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies, clinical re­search organizations, and university institutional review boards (IRBs) are putting policies, procedures, and checks in place to reduce the chance of such transgressions occurring. Federal and state funding agencies, the National Institutes of Health, uni­versities, clinical research organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and IRBs are also now frequently checking their clinical and research audits and monitoring pro cedures to ensure that intellectual property licenses are current and consistent with usage. If your institution does not have such procedures in place, I recommend that you make an effort to correct this to preclude the institution’s wandering inadver­tently into this dangerous minefield. The easiest way to do this is to anchor these checks to routine IRB renewals and research committee reviews in research settings and to annual reviews in clinical settings.