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Your source for expert commentary on IP management issues.
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About
Editor-in-Chief, Anatole Krattiger
Editorial Board
Concept Foundation
PIPRA
Fiocruz, Brazil
bioDevelopments- Institute
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Why This Topic Is Important
This section covers a full gamut of issues that can shape the national policy and legal environment for
innovation and technology transfer. These include the oversight of the courts, legislation over IP
protection, ownership, and access, and funding of science and higher education, as well as the need for
compliance with international agreements, realistic expectations about the amount of revenues that can
come from technology transfer, and the delicate and complex dynamics that can lead regional innovation
clusters to succeed or fail. By understanding these issues, you will better understand the nature of the
innovation environment within you are working as a scientist, and from the examples of other countries’
experiences you will draw inspiration for how you and your institution might influence your country’s
innovative environment for the better.
Key Implications and Best Practices: Section 3
- Global changes in IP regimes, especially changes that affect developing countries, have been tremendous. Within the evolving IP regime, your country has considerable freedom to control the effects of these changes. Indeed, much of the impact of these changes will depend on how countries and institutions respond to the new IP regime.
- An important response is the creation of an effective technology transfer program. Your role in this process is essential.
- As a scientist, you understand the interrelatedness of science, R&D, technological advance, and commercial investment. Share these insights with your institution’s technology transfer office, as well as with its senior managers.
- Countries engaged in reforming their R&D and technology transfer efforts are today often including royalty-sharing provisions for scientists in publicly funded research institutions. This approach also comes with obligations to assign ownership rights to your institution and a duty to disclose inventions. All of these changes should be seen as incentives to turn inventions into innovations that benefit society.
- As your institution implements IP policies and patenting strategies, your right to publish is not jeopardized. IP protection and licensing are but one form of knowledge transfer that, if well undertaken, can very much be in the public interest.
- While access to foreign technology is integral to development, it is increasingly important to focus directly on capturing the national (or indigenous) innovation potential of developing countries. Through the activities of your research program, you may be positioned to facilitate such capture and development of the benefits arising from indigenous innovation and traditional knowledge. These efforts should be coupled with benefit-sharing provisions.
- Understand the obligations that are attached to different funding sources when funds are used within the same program. The impact of joint public and private financial support can be complex but will increase, particularly as your institution positions itself strongly within an innovation cluster and engages in product development.
- As a scientist, you play an increasingly important role in knowledge-based innovation clusters. Do not shy away from becoming an entrepreneur yourself.
- Collaboration is often based on establishing personal contacts, for example, building close connections and networks to other scientists and research groups in the same field via conferences and reciprocal visiting arrangements; these all foster the formation of collaborative research projects and are fundamental for effective sharing of knowhow and show-how.
 Abstract
The Activities and Roles of M.I.T. in Forming Clusters and Strengthening Entrepreneurship
by Lita Nelsen
Abstract:
This chapter describes the structure, policies, and operations of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). The chapter emphasizes the licensing office’s role in generating spinout companies and considers the importance of the biotechnology cluster within the state of Massachusetts and it’s surrounding regions. Also discussed is M.I.T.’s approach to ensuring that licensing procedures maximize access to medicines and vaccines arising from M.I.T.’s research.
Abstract
What Does It Take to Build a Local Biotechnology Cluster in a Small Country? The Case of Turku, Finland
by Kimmo Viljamaa
Abstract:
There seem to be new biotechnology initiatives springing up in almost every country and every region, no matter how big or small. This is the case for both developed countries and many developing countries. At the same time, many studies seem to suggest that the industrial dynamics of the biotechnology sector strongly favor only a few globally important locations. These are characterized by well-established relations between small R&D companies and the presence of venture capitalists, big multinational corporations, and service providers. The tendency of biotechnology clusters to form in certain locations raises some questions. Can all these new initiatives be successful? Can biotechnology research clusters develop and prosper on a smaller scale? The aim of this chapter is to discuss ideas for building successful biotechnology clusters in less-developed places. Using the example of Turku, Finland, the chapter analyzes how public policy and local activity can “fill the gaps” in the innovation system, thereby facilitating the emergence of a biotechnology industry. Although this case study is from a developed country, many developing countries face similar challenges to those Turku has faced.
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