# Publicly funded research could require open-source rights

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/publicly-funded-research-could-require-open-source-rights/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Bill Gurley](https://realalpha.app/people/bill-gurley/) · Bill Gurley is general partner at Benchmark and author of Runnin’ Down a Dream. · Backed and sat on the boards of Uber, Zillow, OpenTable and Stitch Fix.
- Host: [Tim Ferriss](https://realalpha.app/people/tim-ferriss/) · Host, The Tim Ferriss Show · Wrote The 4-Hour Workweek; an early investor or advisor in Uber and Shopify.
- Show: The Tim Ferriss Show
- Episode: [Bill Gurley — The AI Era, 10 Days in China, & Life Lessons from Bob Dylan, Jerry Seinfeld,, and More](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/), Dec 17, 2025
- Moment: 1:45:27 to 1:52:28 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/publicly-funded-research-could-require-open-source-rights/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6327

## Quote

> “So why doesn't **an NIH grant come with an open source writer**?”
> — [Bill Gurley](https://realalpha.app/people/bill-gurley/) at [1:47:02](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6422) · The Tim Ferriss Show

## Takeaways

1. Gurley questions whether 17-year patent protection is needed to spur innovation.
2. He asks why NIH-funded inventions remain proprietary.
3. He sees open-source competition as a driver of faster iteration.

## About this segment

Bill Gurley doubts patents are necessary to drive innovation and questions why publicly funded research becomes proprietary. He points to open-source competition as a way to accelerate progress.

From “Bill Gurley — The AI Era, 10 Days in China, & Life Lessons from Bob Dylan, Jerry Seinfeld,, and More”, Dec 17, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:45:40](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6340) Well, I'll just present a list here from some prep notes. You have U.S. healthcare, regulatory capture, intellectual property, U.S. China, fairness in financial markets, U.S. K-12. Could you speak to intellectual property and fairness in financial markets, how you might be thinking about those? Intellectual property is, I got to be a top 10,000% supporter of open source. And this gets back to Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist.

[1:46:07](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6367) but he talks about prosperity comes when ideas have sex and just the sharing of information in my mind should be free, that it shouldn't cost anything. And it's very unclear to me that the patent system actually adds value. I'm quite doubtful that the human mind wouldn't innovate if it didn't come with a 17 year financial protection. Like I just, I'm doubtful of that. There's great scientists at every university working on problems that aren't necessarily being patented.

[1:46:41](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6401) And your ability for hyper-competition and innovation is so much higher when there aren't restrictions in place. I think the world's a better place when ideas are shared and not protected. Since the system we're working with is the system we're currently working with, how might something like drug development work without patent protection? Here's an interesting thing. The NIH gives out $40 billion a year, and a lot of that money goes to companies that end up getting venture capital back.

[1:47:11](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6431) I've had some very open fights with people about this. Yeah. So why doesn't an NIH grant come with an open source writer? Yeah. And so if the VCs want to fund- With federal funding. Yeah, it's federal funding. Yeah, I agree with that. And right now, there's a big fight over whether just their research papers have to go on non-private networks instead of the private ones they're on today i mean they just want the information out there like that's a minor step i would consider a major step and you don't have to take the money why is the u.s government giving people money that ends up becoming proprietary inventions that makes no sense whether it's the u.s government or individual philanthropists or foundations i mean on some level if that then at some point i agree with that but are there industries that i mean

[1:47:59](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6479) The only one that first came to mind was drug development, where the R&D costs are so high. They all cry. The VCs will tell you it'll never work. No one will have any incentive if we don't have a 17-year protection. The entire Silicon Valley— I'm not saying— No, I know. I know. I've lived in a world where if someone comes into our office and talks about patents, we roll our eyes. because none of the types of businesses that we've backed at Benchmark in Silicon Valley are ever about patents.

[1:48:29](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6509) Elon has famously open source dollars for Tesla patents, like such a bold thing to do and so gracious, I think, really to society. But his point is, oddly, I was talking to Ted Cruz about this and he said, yeah, Elon thinks the same thing. Like he views the edge of competition is how fast are you moving how great are your products the consumers love them not can i defend them in a court of law and the protection that the drug guys get is so much no one can really use software patents to like get protection an algorithm or something like no one even tries but with drugs if i have this particular genome sequence all of a sudden like i get this huge proprietary window in the market it's just nutty this is not exactly the same thing but what a service to humanity i was just watching i think the documentary name people can watch it

[1:49:26](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6566) for free on youtube and other places the thinking game about deep mind and demis and his team releasing alpha fold i mean all the structures of these proteins i mean it's just like oh my god what an incredible well there's an example right there the the original Hey. they wrote was open source and open ai doesn't exist without that discovery which happened at google yeah in open source you know they just exploited it the fastest yeah wild and by the way this i mean not to divert too much back but right now china has 10 open source ai models they're all in hyper competition with each other that is a dangerously effective primordial soup for innovation compared to what we have here. How does, I mean, I should probably know this, but I don't. How does China handle, what are the policies around and laws around intellectual

[1:50:24](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6624) property? Interestingly, I found a document online that someone had put together a PowerPoint about the history of open source at China, and it's 20 years old. So it's not like they just stumbled into it i think when you consider that you know go back 20 years ago the primary criticisms of china was that they stole ip and so if you're the chinese government and there's this new thing called open source you're going to embrace it because there's no fault there because everyone's sharing and everyone and so you know if you look at the big open source projects linux mysql and you go on the web pages, like you'll see Alibaba, you know, Tencent, like these companies have been supporting these technologies for a while. But every five years, they write this five-year plan.

[1:51:17](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6677) You know, the Chinese government puts it out. Five years ago, they had a huge section on open source. So they're clearly suggesting to the entrepreneurs that the government favors that approach. And going back to Ridley's book and the notion of pure competition, I think this is a rational optimist. Yeah. I think the society benefits from that. I use this example. Imagine there's two feudal societies that are all agricultural based. There's two of them though.

[1:51:47](https://realalpha.app/v/rjSesMsQTxk/?t=6707) In one, once a week, the farmers come to market and just trade goods and then they leave. In the other one, the farmers come to market and they're required to share their best practices with everybody else and then they leave going back to this peer kind of example in the book that one's going to be much more performant than the other one and this gets to ridley's point about ideas having sex i mean open source also we talked about this a decent amount in our last conversation but