Sharing data

With all this talk of patents around here I think the question of wether scientists actually share their data is an interresting one. Patents, at least initially, were designed to give some protection so that data could be shared. Public access to scientific findings is making progress, and my favorite open access journal PLOS has two interresting articles on mandatory open access to federally funded reasearch findings and on the poor rate of sharing of sequences on genbank...food for thoughts.