Minds to Market: Catalytic Role of IPR

The millennium is set to open up new vistas in industry-academia alliance. And those institutions which fail to adjust with the emerging realities are likely to get marginalised, comments Prof Prabuddha Ganguli.

THE fundamental facet of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is to provide rational legal frameworks to create and establish ownership or propriety domains of knowledge. Such a protection would enable fair sharing of knowledge with due recognition and reasonable benefits to the creator/owner of that knowledge. This form of social governance would encourage development of innovations and evolve a sense of respect for the developed knowledge, discourage parasitic “knowledge piracy”, or “free riding”, profiteering from counterfeits in the market, and help to create symbiotic relationships in society.

Reasonable legal frameworks that would discourage misuse of IPR, unfair and anti-social monopolistic practices should compliment a strong IPR regime. Only then would society provide an ethical climate that promotes innovation, spur productivity, and investment via fair “knowledge prospecting” and contribute to the establishment of a competitive, non-monopolistic and balanced humane world. Intellectual Property Rights is a system that allows for legal protection of the “added knowledge” in the existing knowledge pool provided certain conditions are met. It does not give protection to any portion of the already existing global knowledge base.

The World Trade Organisation of which India is a member has as its objectives the setting up of multi-lateral rule-based fair trade between nations. Diverse aspects of IPR are built into the WTO through the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It lays down the minimum standards and ground rules for the granting of IPR, enforcement, IPR capability building, technology/knowledge sharing, affordability, etc. by the member states of the WTO.

Industry-Academia Symbiosis

With opening up of the economy, the academic and industry in most developing and least developed nations must soul search to innovate on their own, learn to manage innovations effectively, protect and strategically exploit their intellectual property using all the IPR tools (fig. 1). The defensive and low-concerned stance adopted by institutions in most developing and least developed nations has gone on too long. The educational institutions and industries have continued to thrive in a highly protected & regulated regime with assured markets thus far unchallenged by global competition. Further survival will demand the forceful lifting of the veil to get savvy and learn to play on equal terms the new rule-based game of TRIPS. On April 26th, 2001 “The World Intellectual Property Day”, WIPO launched the campaign ‘‘Promote the Innovation and Invention, Respect and Protect the Intellectual Property’’.

Fig. 1. IPR Tools Ref: “Intellectual Property Right — Unleashing the Knowledge Economy”; P. Ganguli (Tata McGraw-Hill 2001) & Gearing Up for Patents — The Indian Scenario”; P. Ganguli (Universites Press 1998)

It has supported this campaign though seminars and workshops around the world and it is for the Nations to take advantage of their expertise and efforts in the structured IPR capability programmes of WIPO. The global trend now is to evolve cooperative research programme with incentives for business houses to develop research partnerships with academic research groups engaged in fundamental and applied research. Conventional mindsets will have to give way to operational methods in “turbulence” [complex interdisciplinary teams contributing in parts] and “rapids” modes [many teams contributing in parallel], involving globally networked teams working in tandem. Organizational structures are now being reengineered to function in these new ways for rapid diffusion of innovation to markets. Clearly structured “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)” in which IPR will play a decisive role will guide relationships between participating teams.

Through such relationships, the industry gains access to world-class research resources and the best of human resources. Such working together brings into the academic institutions a sense of purpose, exposure to demands of market realities, creation of knowledge that can lead to new products and technologies that are further developed by their private sponsors. In turn the faculty and students who participate in such programmes are exposed to future technologies, markets, business opportunities and new career options. Such symbiotic relationships pave the way to enhancement of networks and collaboration, enrichment of the educational programmes with sustained knowledge renewal and its transformation into tangible productive forces aiding in the creation of well-prepared human resources of an innovative culture.

On one hand this has led to the blurring of boundaries between disciplines and on the other side has demanded formalized frameworks for “ownership” of the developed knowledge and “benefit sharing” between partners The creation of niche domains of knowledge and managing them effectively are issues that institutions will have to cope with. In such a working relationship the collaborating partners would freely share all knowledge, information and resources. To sustain innovation under such frameworks, organizations need to make it a part of their value systems. All knowledge related activities such as accessing, creating, generating, trading and applying knowledge are intimately connected to intellectual property rights and their enforcement.

All features of IPR are therefore linked to project management as they significantly influence decision making at various stages of project dynamics. Even as projects are conceived and strategies are planned, the relevant IPR linked to the subject need to be mapped so that appropriate technology/product protection “grid-maps” can be constructed. These can be used to arrive at decisions on the trajectory of the project. During the course of the projects one will have to decide on the appropriate stages:

• when applications for IPR are to be initiated
• when disclosures in terms of publications/announcements, presentations to professional bodies etc. have to be made; or
• when to explore possibilities of early licensing of the results, search for partners for joint working alliances, marketing etc.

Impact of Bayh-Dole Act

In the USA, one of the earliest attempts to sensitize and enhance economic utility of academic research was the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act (Public Law 96 - 517). It allows institutions to own the patents that arise out of federally sponsored research (The Rise of IPR in the American University: L. Nelsen, Science, 279, no.5356, 1998). Under this act the universities would not only develop patented technologies, but could license the patents to industry. A provision of the law allowed the universities to retain royalties from such licenses and specified that a fraction of the royalties would be shared as personal income to the inventors.

The impact of this Act was that the US patents granted to American Universities rose from 300 in 1980 to 2000 in 1995. Universities granted around 5396 licenses between 1991 and 1995. More than 250 new companies were formed directly through university licenses in 1996 and a total of 1900 companies since the inception of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.

The Bayh-Dole Act also catalysed a new approach to the management of science and technology with the setting up of Offices of Technology Transfer (OTT), Offices of Technology Licensing (OTL), etc to act as effective interfaces between the university and the society. The Association of Technology Managers (AUTM) in North America is a body that provides a platform for sharing of experience and knowledge between the various OTTs and OTLs. It also provides guidance on formats for MOUs, licensing agreements, Confidentiality Agreements, IPR Policies, etc. In recent years countries such as China has worked on comprehensive and multilevel frameworks to institutionalise IPR.

Research in IPR strategy and policy was actively carried out and publicised, aggressive IPR to create a new China by building up a model for a socialist modern society, through realisation that the prosperity of the Chinese Nation would also depend on its speed and ability to improve and perfect China’s IP system with simultaneous enhancement of the international exchange and cooperation with respect to IP protection. This harmonious social atmosphere for respecting knowledge and protecting intellectual property has impacted the educational system, R&D institutions and the Industries alike. This is reflected in the dramatic growth of the domestic patent applications to 29,962 an increase of approx. 20% in 2001 the very first year of the 10th Five-year Plan over the corresponding figure in previous year, which was 18.1%.

During the 9th Five year plan period the growth rate of patent applications for inventions (37.7%) filed by colleges and universities, science research institutes and enterprises was much higher than that of expenses on R&D (20.8% per annum) during the same period.

However in the year 2000, the R&D expenditure in China was 89.6 RMB. For example 60.3% of R&D expenses of the whole country was given to enterprises, but the number of patent applications for inventions filed by the enterprises accounted for only 30% of the total domestic applications. This has been a cause of grave concern in China and the following corrective measures are under implementation:

• Enactment of globally harmonised IPR laws and systems.
• Mordenised IPR management and administration infrastructure.
• Trial Plan for Patent work in 60 Enterprises
• Three Model Zones on for Industrialisation of patented technologies
• Development and Research Centre for Intellectual Property and Examination system, including research in patent policy and strategy
• entralised work on assessment of IPR assets
• Evaluation of China Patent Award
• Notice against counterfeiting in IPR
• Documentation o traditional knowledge databases
• Publicity of Patent work
• Training of society to take on protection of Intellectual Property
• China Intellectual Property Centres with a distance IPR training Programme
• Targeted analysis and forecast on IPR protection in strategic technologies of importance to China e.g. Petroleum Engineering, Digital Television Technology, Liquid Display Technologies, Biotechnology etc. This is made available to assist in the planning of R&D, allocation of national funds & resources, designing of academic-industry collaborations, managing nationally strategic collaborations, selection of enterprises bringing in FDI, etc.

The impact of these measures is beginning to enhance IPR awareness and sensitivity of Chinese Institutions. The recent statistics released by WIPO [Table 1] reflects the IPR thrust in Chinese institutions.

Republic Korea is another country that has taken IPR seriously as a National Thrust Area. In addition to initiating targetted programmes in IPR on lines similar to China, The Republic of Korea has been very successful in their IPR awareness and sensitisation at all levels from the schools, colleges, R&D institutions and industries. Table 1 also shows that there are 3 Korean organisations in the list of top 10 PCT applicants.

The IPR system in Japan has grown rapidly particularly in the post war period. Though the involvement of industry in IPR related activities has been extensive, the role played by the academic system has been relatively low. The real impetus for the nationwide spread of the S&T linkages with the industry was initiated through the University-Industry Technology Transfer law ( TLO).

This law’s objective was to create a cycle of intellectual creation by enabling universities to acquire patent rights for their research results, transfer technologies to public sector based on those rights, and apply the resulting profits to further research activities.

More specifically this law aimed to promote technology transfer by providing up to 20 million (now 30 million yen; 250,000 dollars) annually in assistance to technology licensing organisations that serve the purpose of of uniting universities and industry. Based on this law TLOs were established in every region of Japan.

The benefits of this process are already apparent from the rate of growth of companies based on university-transferred technologies and evolution of venture funded SMEs in Japan.

India & the CSIR Model

The IPR awareness in India has increased significantly in the last decade. However the industries and the academic institutions are not yet in the take-off phase in their patenting related activities.

However the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India was an early starter in the country that initiated a concerted aggressive patenting programme in its laboratories almost a decade ago. It built into its research the policy of “patent and publish or perish”. It directed all its laboratories to follow this route in a planned and systematic manner. Within a decade of this effort, CSIR now stands at the number 2 position in the list of top 10

PCT Patent Applicants in Asia.
(To be concluded)