Innovation and IP Management: A Contextual Overview
Topic Guide for Technology Transfer Managers

Abstract: This chapter presents a theoretical framework to explain the role of intellectual property (IP) in innovation and applies the framework to the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. Developing countries progress through stages of capability to reach the status of Innovative Developing Country (IDC). To reach the status of an IDC, countries need to give concerted attention to six components of product innovation: R&D in the public and private sectors, regulatory mechanisms for drugs and vaccines to achieve safety and efficacy, the ability to manufacture to high standards new health technology products, national distribution systems in both the public and private sectors, international distribution systems (including supply of drugs and vaccines through international organizations such as UNICEF, the operation of global funds, and trade among countries), and systems for managing IP.

An analysis of pharmaceutical innovation in Korea’s vaccine industry concludes that its success in developing its impressive capabilities was achieved by paying close attention to all six components of innovation. Yet unknown is the extent to which the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property will stimulate or thwart progress in the other innovation components when IP is quickly moved to an advanced stage.

Abstract: If universities adopt sound licensing practices, the universities will not only help stimulate investment in research on diseases that primarily afflict the poor in developing countries, but also ensure that the products of the research are affordable and widely available in those countries. Ensuring global access is one of the central goals of intellectual property management. But universities confront two main obstacles in their efforts to achieve the goal. First, university administrators, technology transfer officers, and business people are too often unaware of both the need to ensure access to new health technologies in developing countries and the manner in which patenting and licensing practices can be an integral component of global access strategies. Second, there is only a short history of experience in incorporating such concerns in negotiating licenses, so no best practices have yet evolved. This chapter offers a few possible approaches to ensuring broad access to university inventions while preserving incentives to development, including patenting inventions in a select list of developing countries. The chapter concludes by urging all of the players in this field to build upon their own experience and to take creative risks in the pursuit of new solutions.

Abstract: Ethical concerns and controversies about patenting are playing an increasingly prominent role in the development and applications of the biosciences. Despite the growing importance of ethical issues, there is currently no consensus or clarity on the ethical principles that should guide patenting of human, animal, and plant genes and cells. The three major areas of contention are: (1) whether some or all patents on genes and cells are unethical per se, based on concerns such as commodification, dignity, and similar concepts; (2) how tissue samples are collected, particularly in reference to the principles of prior informed consent and benefit sharing; and (3) how patents are used to restrict access to medical and agricultural use of biotechnology innovations. Given the lack of any agreed guiding principles for navigating these issues, policy-makers, decision-makers, scientists, and users of biotechnology have no choice but to address these contested ethical concerns using a case-by-case approach.

Abstract: The benefits of technology transfer are everywhere apparent, and perhaps the best news—as this Handbook’s compilation of case studies demonstrates—is that these benefits are already reaching developing countries. Building on the success of the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act, countries everywhere are seeking to better utilize the research capacities of their universities and public research institutions. The growth of such technology transfer initiatives is inspiring, as are the innovative varieties of partnerships that have developed to ensure that the world’s poor benefit from the global intellectual property system.

Abstract: Recent national and international changes in intellectual property (IP) legislative frameworks are likely to have profound effects on the ways in which health and agricultural innovations reach the poor and on how public and private research and development institutions pursue their work. Whereas IP rights are sometimes viewed as creating barriers to access to innovations in health and agriculture, we argue that it is not intellectual property, per se, that raises barriers, but rather how intellectual property is used and managed, particularly by public sector institutions. Above all, we argue that intellectual property is only one of six components of innovation. It is rarely the most important component.

The chapter reviews recent dramatic developments in institutional aspects of intellectual property, as well as global policy shifts and international studies that, among other outcomes, affected the environment for the creation of MIHR and PIPRA. In the field of health, changes have been particularly pronounced with the founding of a new form of institution for innovation: product-development partnerships (PDPs). As a result, we make the case for a fundamental shift in the way in which IP management in health and agricultural innovation is viewed and conducted. In addition, we argue that IP management should be seen as an important element in developing countries’ strategies to become more innovative in addressing diseases of poverty, the alleviation of poverty, and malnutrition. The public sector can employ new ways to achieve its goals within the evolving IP framework. These new ways can help it better mobilize the resources to take a product through the process of innovation. These new ways should include, a) creative licensing practices that ensure global access and affordability, b) improved institutional IP management capabilities, c) the formulation of comprehensive national IP policies, and d) the strengthening of IP court systems and patent offices.

These are what best practices in IP management are all about, and what this Handbook seeks to help bring about and promote.