Special Deal For Monsanto

For 30 years, Harvard maintained a highhanded policy on patents stemming from the research of professors here.

The policy states that the Corporation has to approve patents stemming from Harvard research in health and technology and, most important, stipulates that the proceeds of those patents must be dedicated to the public.

That policy is one that reflects an old, ivory-tower conception of what Harvard should be: an institution set apart from worldly concerns like profit, interested only in the public good.

For all its noble intentions, though, the old policy never produced much. Harvard professors are far more interested in research than in seeing the products of that research widely produced and distributed. And similarly, corporations are unwilling to distribute an invention without the financial protection a patent provides.

So this year Harvard embarked on a new kind of research relationship--one in which a private corporation gave the University research money and in turn retained commercial sales and distribution rights to the products of the research.

The landmark agreement was one for an astounding $23 million in funds from the Monsanto Company, the St. Louis Mo., corporation that makes various chemical-related products, its most famous one being Astroturf.

The funds go to two doctors at the Medical School who are doing as-yet-unspecified research that sources say will probably have something to do with cancer treatment.

Harvard is handling the whole relationship with kid gloves. A new University Committee on patent policy has issued a report that supercedes the Corporation's old patent policy, temporarily suspended so that the Monsanto deal could go through.

Harvard and Monsanto have taken care repeatedly to assure the press that the professors who will work on the project will do so completely independently, pursuing any line of research they want within certain parameters set by Monsanto.

And the University will also set up a special nonpartisan committee to oversee and review the research.

Still, Treasurer George Putnam '49 explained last week, "we had to do a lot of soul searching to enter into a deal like this."