Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: a handbook of best practices: Volume 1
Sharing the art of IP management: Intellectual property can be a powerful tool. When effectively and ethically managed, it can accelerate the development of lifesaving, poverty-alleviating innovations and provide access to them. This Executive Guide, companion to the Handbook, discusses and summarizes each of the 17 sections of the Handbook and distills best practices related to each of the major topics. They are presented in brief, simply worded lists that address the concerns of policymakers, heads of universities and R&D centers, scientists, and technology transfer officers. This book will be invaluable for anyone seeking to use intellectual property strategically and put intellectual property to work. Published by MIHR, PIPRA, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, and bioDevelopments-International Institute this Executive Guide will serve as a concise guide for experts and provide fascinating insight for all citizens of the Brave New World.
From Best Principles to Best Practice
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continuous, sound IP management, and our desire to encourage this was a major
impetus for compiling this Handbook and for writing the Executive Guide.
Fortunately, as numerous case studies have shown, the public sector can craft
effective solutions that can achieve, or at least approach, a suitable balance. This
can be accomplished by using the existing IP system, especially as it addresses
situations in which companies agree to donate or otherwise share their intellectual
property.
• Genius can flourish anywhere, and the emerging global systems of innovation
in health and agriculture open up new prospects for innovation everywhere.
This notion has profound implications for the management of innovation,
technology transfer, market competition, and economic development in every
country, regardless of its economic status. Provided with opportunities and resources,
scientists and scholars from any locale can create promising inventions
with the potential to become valuable technology. And whether inventions are
home grown or come from outside, authoritative IP management will play a
crucial role in enabling and preserving access to the resulting innovations.
• Policies to promote the creation and management of intellectual property by
public sector institutions should give first priority to advancing the mission
of those institutions. In most countries, the mission of universities is education,
research, and public service. Universities are not revenue generators.
Technology transfer should support the larger mission, and not merely the
budgets, of those institutions.
• The historical trend has been for intellectual property to benefit mostly the
affluent. This is due, in part, to the fact that insufficient attention has been
paid by the public sector to managing intellectual property. This lack of focused
attention must be corrected. Public sector IP management is a rather
young discipline, and there have been enormous changes in the public sector’s
involvement in health research since the 1970s and in agri-biotechnology since
the 1990s. The public sector is only now beginning to appreciate how it can
use its own intellectual property—and leverage that of others—to help meet its
social mission, including its responsibilities to the poor. We believe that there
is growing interest, within both the public and private sectors, in using intellectual
property for public benefit but, also, a lack of knowledge and capacity.
This Handbook is designed to help address these needs.
We hope this Handbook and Executive Guide will encourage all parties to take greater
advantage of the unprecedented opportunity to benefit from the strategic management of
intellectual property aimed at promoting the public welfare—especially those people who
have, until now, been unable to partake in technology’s benefits—and that this will contribute
to building a healthier and more equitable world.