Home > Topics > The Policy and Legal Environment for Innovation > Echoes of Bayh-Dole? A Survey of IP and Technology Transfer Policies in Emerging and Developing Economies > Editor's Summary, Implications and Best Practices

Investments in publicly-funded research are beginning to pay off dramatically in developing countries (India and China are the most conspicuous examples). The task now is to maximize the returns on these decades-old investments. The best way to do that is to maximize the flow of new technologies into the private sector, and this chapter considers what public policy issues need to be addressed to achieve this. It focuses on three key aspects: the availability of IP protection, the designation of IP ownership, and the existence of the infrastructure needed to make IP protection and ownership a reality.

This chapter offers detailed assessments of these three aspects in 18 developing countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam. This survey, these snapshots, of IP public policy make this chapter an essential one-stop shop for a quick understanding of these countries’ current technology transfer capabilities.

In regard to the availability of intellectual property protections, the survey presented in this chapter finds that countries can be logically sorted into three tiers.

1. The first tier contains the most innovative countries, those with an active IP system used vigorously by domestic patentees.
2. The second tier consists of countries seeking to become more innovative, with IP systems that are only beginning to be used by domestic patentees.
3. The third tier countries are those with limited or nascent IP systems and virtually no domestic patentees.

Almost all first tier innovative countries, about half of second tier countries, and no third tier countries have formally addressed the question of IP ownership through national policy.

This survey also reveals that strong IP protection capabilities are correlated to robust scientific research efforts (especially as indicated by the number of published research articles and domestic patents), to the country’s history of IP laws, and to membership in international trade agreements (particularly TRIPS and UPOV). As far as IP ownership issues, policies in all of these countries are moving towards granting the rights and responsibilities of ownership to research institutions. Finally, strong, sophisticated institutional IP management is correlated to research capacity and to government investment in public sector and university research and development. Overall, vigorous IP protection policies and the capacity to enforce and manage them are mutually strengthening. The biggest factor for this growth is the amount of research and development a country conducts, followed by the ability of its economy to absorb new innovations into existing industries. Those seeking to use intellectual property as part of an integrated strategy to grow the economy through the public financing and commercialization of innovation will find these trends worth considering and will want to consult the chapter for its detailed survey of IP approaches and capacities in developing countries.

Key Implications and Best Practices

Given that IP management is heavily context specific, these Key Implications and Best Practices are intended as starting points to be adapted to specific needs and circumstances.

For Government Policymakers

• Strong, sophisticated institutional IP management is correlated with the underlying determinants of scientific and technological capacity, including, most importantly, the amount spent annually on R&D at universities and in the public sector. Understanding the interconnectedness of these factors should drive an integrated approach to development of R&D capacity, which includes concomitant investments in both scientific infrastructure and IP systems.
• Whereas the Bayh-Dole model for moving government support R&D to the marketplace might be appropriate for some countries, for others it might not. Approaches should be specifically adapted to local legal, political and economic situations. There is no “one size fits all” policy directive.
• Intellectual property is part of an integrated strategy to drive economic development through the public financing and commercialization of innovation.
• Strong IP protections and the institutional capacity to manage them grow in tandem, driven primarily by the amount of R&D being conducted and, secondarily, by the ability of the local economy to absorb new technologies into existing industry or an entrepreneurial sector (such as a biotechnology cluster).

For Senior Management (university president, R&D manager, etc)

• Whether a nation has a Bayh-Dole model for moving innovations towards development, or another system altogether, it is fundamentally important to implement the system institutionally so that the public benefits can be realized.

For Scientists

• Understand the critical connection between R&D investment, productivity of research programs and the importance of sound IP management practices.

For Technology Transfer Officers

• An understanding of not only the law, but also the public policy that underlies it, will be essential for its proper implementation. For example, for Bayh-Dole, the policy rationale is not directed towards revenue generation, but rather for moving government funded R&D to the marketplace for the greater public benefit.