Are there situations where a company for the common good must give up
the economic advantage accorded by intellectual property laws?  How
should the Bayer Credo--Bayer: Success Through Expertise with
Responsibility--impact its corporate responsibility in the anthrax
situation?

This appears to contain two questions--I do not see the two issues as
related.  But as to the first question, the answer is yes.  There are
instances where a company might be required to reliquish, e.g., a
patent for the commpon good.  A common example is a vaccine.  If a
pharmaceutical company held a patent on a vaccine and the disease
became an epidemic, the government (which grants the "monoploy" that
is a patent) can cause the company to surrender the patented
technology so that more and cheaper vaccine is available.  Or, the
government could simply ignore the patent and cause another
pharmaceutical company to make the vaccine and grant that company
immunity from patent infringement.

Another example: if a company fails to police how its trademarks are
used and a "trademarked" term falls into common usage as a noun for
the described product as a result, trademark law says that the
trademark owner must relinquish its trademark rights and surrender the
word to the common lexicon.  Common examples are "aspirin,"
"cellophane," and "escalator."  I think this is an appropriate example
because a company is being required to give up an intellectual
property right rather than being permitted to continue to possess a
lawful monopoly of what has become a generic term.