RESOURCES
- The National Innovation Framework
- Draft Bill
- IPWeb Article
- Australian Productivity Commission Report
- Bayh-Dole Reform and the Progress of BioMedicine
- The Selfish Gene: Data Sharing and Withholding in Academic Genetics
- Universities and the Knowledge Economy, Robin Cowan
- Addressing Global Health Inequities: An Open Licensing Approach for University Innovations, Benkler et al, 20 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1031 (2005)
- FAQs
Draft Bill on IPR from Publicly Funded Research
The South African government's Department of Science and Technology has published a draft bill that aims to increase the socio-economic impact of publicly financed research.
The approach in the bill is to try to achieve this by massively increasing patents generated from research conducted at publicly funded institutions, predominantly higher education institutions.
It is important to the development of South Africa that South Africans benefit from research which has a socio economic impact. The Shuttleworth Foundation believes that there are important ways of encouraging socio-economic impact and especially innovation, which aren't in the draft form of the bill. The Foundation therefore responded to the department's invitation to comment.
The draft bill stated that every research output from South African universities would have to be screened to see if there was anything that could potentiality be patented. Anything the university chooses not to patent would be considered for patenting under a second review by a central government office. This would impact on everyone who carries out research at a science council or a university, including all students studying at South African universities.
The Foundation's submission aimed to clarify the difference between invention and innovation. Invention happens when someone comes up with a novel technology and creates something that hasn't been done before. Innovation is when something new changes society, such as when a new product generates a new market. The objective of researchers is understanding, while the objective of entrepreneurs is innovation.
The Department of Science and Technology has undertaken to consider all the submissions made to it it, and will decide what action to take. It is the hope of the Shuttleworth Foundation that its submissions will be taken into consideration and the bill reformulated.