A physician-scientist at a University Medical School and a molecular biologist at a university unaffiliated with a Medical School are collaborating on a series of studies that involve cancer clinical trial subjects and biospecimens from those participants. Their work is funded by a grant from the NIH, with the physician-scientist as the PI. The goal is to correlate genetic profiles with patient outcomes in response to the same protocol therapy. The clinician enrolls the subjects and his team obtains the samples which are processed in the molecular biologist's lab; i.e., germline and tumor DNA is prepared and preserved, and cancer cell lines are grown from the primary tumor. Both DNA and cell lines are kept in a facility readily accessible to both collaborators.

The molecular biologist cultures a cell line that displays unique properties for conducting experiments, and notifies the physician-scientist that these cell lines will enable them to perform their planned experiments more rapidly, which will permit them to include more experiments than originally planned. The physician scientist's department for innovation urges her to patent and commercialize the cell line. The molecular biologist rejects this proposal, saying she believes that science should be open.

What issues are at stake? How should this disagreement be resolved? How could the researchers have prepared for this?