Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” ² conceptualized resource overutilization topics such as overgrazing on renewable crops, species extinction, and market behavior. In each case, an under assignment or inability to enforce property rights leads to a set of incentives that cause overuse of a commonly-held property resource. In Hardin’s view, too many owners of a common resource, each having the right to use, leads to overuse. Heller and Eisenberg³ have developed the mirror image “tragedy of the anticommons” in which an over assignment of property rights for a privately-held resource leads to under utilization of the resource. In the “anticommons”, multiple owners each have the right to exclude others from a resource and this leads to underuse since no one person can use the whole. One example occurs when patents for gene fragments in biomedical research lead to lack of freedom to operate since users of whole genes in downstream applications are required to license numerous already-patented gene fragments. The “cost of doing business” in this environment can be disruptive. Many IP stakeholders drive up the cost of establishing value for the IP and incompatible ownerships require individual negotiations. Within the communities of scientists, university technology transfer professionals, and private firms in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, “there seems to be a widely shared perception that negotiations over the transfer of proprietary research tools present a considerable and growing obstacle to progress in biomedical research³.”