Expert Group Report Management of Intellectual Property in ... - KoWi

The industrial partners were generally happy with this approach to the extent they could acquire and
own, often at a fraction of the cost, valuable technologies, which they could exploit to their advantage.
In fairness, most PROs were also happy with this model, which does not require them to get involved
in the management of their intellectual property.
The main disadvantages of this model are that it neither rewards the investment of public sponsored
research nor does it ensure that potentially useful new technologies are transferred to an environment
that is able to fully develop and commercialise them. In effect, the open science model does not allow
the progressive build-up of a technology pool for the PROs, which can be made available to develop
more collaboration, create spinout companies or grant licences. Since industrial partners often select a
particular PRO for research collaboration due to the existence of the PRO’s background IP and
expertise in a particular discipline, then, unless a PRO actively manages its IPRs, many future
opportunities for research and development may be lost.
The state of collaboration between PROs and Industry and the role of framework conditions has been
investigated under a large Research Project sponsored by the EC and the Austrian Ministry of
Economy and Labour 20 . The report concludes that lower levels of Industry-Science Relations (ISR)
can be attributed mainly to a lack in demand on the enterprise side.
Three major trends have started to reshape the relationship between PROs and industry:
(1) Public research sponsors, local governments and the European Community now demand
that public sponsored research be used effectively as a competitive tool to promote
economic development.
(2) Science is moving faster than ever before and the economic applications increasingly
involve the combination of several disciplines. At the same time, industry is concentrating
on short-term return objectives and core business. There is a definite trend to separate
basic research, mostly public sponsored, performed by PROs from development, mostly
industry sponsored, performed mainly by industry. PROs and Industry are thus becoming
more complementary and the more successful companies tend to outsource a significant
part of their research to well selected PROs.
(3) The goal of increasing the levels of European investment in research can only happen if
there is greater collaboration between industry and PROs. 21
In order to co-operate effectively, PROs and industry must recognise one another’s constraints and
missions. Industry partners are in business to maximise shareholder value. PROs, in addition to their
teaching and research missions, have now received a new mission to maximise the social and
economic returns of their research results to the public.
Industrial perspective shows that researchers often do not appreciate or understand the full
development processes required to take early stage technology to an end product stage. KTOs can do
more to increase this awareness and also take care not to over-value intellectual property rights, which
makes it difficult for industry to access them. The position with regard to awareness of the
development process and understanding true value of IPR are questions which challenge both the
technology transfer offices and industry who share a mutual obligation to assist one another in
increasing awareness about these issues.
20 Benchmarking Industry-Science Relations - The Role of the Framework Conditions - June 2001,
http://www.benchmarking-in-europe.com/eu_initiatives/enterprise_dg/framework_conditions/isr.htm
21 This is one of the conclusions of the European Research Advisory Board document on “Improving
innovation” published under the reference EURAB 02.053 final –
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/eurab/pdf/recommendations2.pdf
31