Russian Duma Speaker Recognizes Need For Government Support of Small Inventors to Promote Market Advance of Sciences

http://www.eurasiabio.org/media/news/duma_speaker__gryzlov_advocates__the__state_support_of_inventors/

Duma speaker Gryzlov advocates the state support of inventors




RIA Nowosti


Дата: 28.03.2008




Duma speaker and the "United Russia" leader Boris Gryzlov believes that the state has to substantially increase the assistance of creative people , to enlarge the financing of research and construction ventures.


He pointed out that presently the financing of research and construction works in Russia totals 1% of the GNP while the correspondent figure in developed countries is 4-6 times higher.


The inventions presenting the frontier of the science demand substantial assets to be implemented and the inventors usually badly lack the money.

Europe Must Use Its Head On Academic Research

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85f21278-eb97-11dc-9493-0000779fd2ac.html


Europe must use its head on academic research


By Bruno van Pottelsberghe


Financial Times - Leaders & Letters


Published: March 7 2008


The European Union summit next week is set to decide that the main policies of the much-maligned Lisbon strategy, which aims to make Europe the world's most innovative region, should be carried through until 2010.


And why not? Though average growth is sluggish, the EU has created almost 6.5m jobs in the past two years and 5m more are expected by 2009. Average unemployment is expected to fall to below 7 per cent this year, the lowest since the mid-1980s. The Lisbon benchmark of getting 70 per cent of the adult population into work by 2010, which escaped the EU's recent purge of targets, no longer looks impossible.


[ONE MUST SERIOUSLY QUESTION WHETHER THE JOB GROWTH HAS BEEN IN THE GOVERNMENTAL SECTOR]


So far, so good. But one vital Lisbon policy area is going backwards: research and development.


As the European Commission itself concedes, the proportion of the EU's gross domestic product spent on R&D has actually dropped since the Lisbon strategy was launched. After flatlining for two decades, research spend fell from nearly 2 per cent in 2000 to 1.85 per cent in 2006, thus moving the EU further away from its target of 3 per cent (recently trimmed to 2.6 per cent) by 2010. But what is a target for overall R&D spending worth? Missing the target is bad enough. But publicly missing the wrong target is perverse.


Europe's spend is well below the US's 2.5 per cent and Japan's score of more than 3 per cent. China has engineered a dramatic increase, from nearly nil 10 years ago to 1.5 per cent in 2006. Of course, there are big differences between EU member states. Finland and Sweden leapfrogged the 3 per cent target several years ago. But the vast majority of EU countries spend well below 2 per cent of their GDP on R&D. Does this matter? Yes and no.


No EU member state fulfils the original commitment that governments should finance one third of investment in R&D, or the equivalent of 1 per cent of GDP. Many have reduced their support over the past 10 years, including the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. This matters. EU governments should increase their spend and honour their promise. Failure to do so ultimately means lower growth.


As for business, spending varies widely between countries, but these variations are to a great extent attributable to differences in technological specialisation. If a country specialises in information and communication technologies (such as Finland) one would expect a higher R&D intensity than for a country specialising in finance (eg Luxembourg) or tourism. Thus measuring EU countries' private R&D spend against a common benchmark makes little sense. Also, governments cannot decree business spending from on high: it does not respond to policymakers' targets.


What, then, should the EU and governments do to get business to invest more in research? When industrial specialisation is taken into account, only Sweden and the US outperform other countries. According to a Bruegel policy brief ( Europe's R&D: Missing the Wrong Targets ), two factors may explain this and point to what the EU's policy focus should be.


For the US, its large, homogeneous market radically improves the expected return on research activities and hence fosters business R&D spending. Europe does not benefit from such a scale effect despite its larger size because its market is still highly fragmented.


Market size may explain the US R&D spend, but it does not explain the Swedish case. One clue: Sweden has a very high level of spending on academic research, the highest as a percentage of GDP in the whole Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development area. This strong emphasis on academic research is a stimulus for business R&D: universities generate new ideas, then business is attracted in to develop them, individually or in clusters, foreign or local. The European countries with the highest academic R&D intensities are also those with the highest business R&D intensities.


True, the EU has recognised the need for free movement of knowledge, the "fifth freedom", and has pushed for a new European Institute of Innovation and Technology. Both initiatives may bear fruit in time. But the bottom line is that the EU needs now to adopt a common European patent - under discussion for 30 frustrating years - and spend more, and more wisely, on academic research. These two steps would do more for the success of the Lisbon strategy - and for the EU's credibility - than maintaining top-down targets for business spend on R&D.


The writer is a senior fellow at Bruegel, the Brussels-based think-tank and professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

EU Commission 'Openly' Promotes Utopian 'Open' Public Innovation Standards That Disadvantage Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=894


25 January 2008


Standardisation Policy More Effective Than Legislation On IP?


Posted by William New


By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch





Efforts by European Union authorities to take advantage of standardisation as a de facto regulatory tool have not been sufficiently systematic in recent years, according to a study published by the European Commission last week. Yet standards especially in information and communications technology (ICT) are becoming more important, said Patrick Van Eecke, attorney at the Brussels office of DLA Piper UK and co-author of the study.



The study http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/standards/piper/executive_summary.pdf
recommended a dialogue between standardisation organisations and all stakeholders. Also urgently needed is a balance between technical standards and intellectual property rights, according to the study.




Concerns that overly rigid IPR protection might become a problem for invention and innovation recently also resulted in other recommendations and decisions at the EU level. A call for changes in the EU patent system was made in a study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) unit and an inquiry into possible anticompetitive practices by the pharmaceutical industry that was initiated by European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes.




[THE EU COMMISSIONERS' DECISION TO LAUNCH SUCH INQUIRIES IS BASED ON IDEOLOGY - DISREPECT FOR EXCLUSIVE NEGATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN AMERICA , WHICH DO NOT EXIST IN EUROPE]**




A debate on future EU standardisation policy will take place at a conference organised by the European Commission on 12 February in Brussels.



Author Van Eecke, speaking with Intellectual Property Watch, pointed to the growing relevance of technical standards that “are more important than legislation.” Companies and citizens either abide by laws passed by governments or not, but to not follow well-established technical standards would mean to be excluded from the market.




[THIS IDEA OF 'TAKING OVER' GLOBAL INDUSTRY STANDARDS HAS BEEN AN ASPIRATION OF THE EU'S SINCE THE LISBON AGENDA MADE ITS DEBUT DURING 2000. ]**


“If you are a policymaker, you really would like to make sure that companies and citizens abide by the rules, so instead of drafting a law you could put them into a standard,” he said.


Using privacy as an example, he said, “You can draft one hundred laws that should protect it - and hope that people follow the law. But if you are able to have EU data protection implemented in the technical standards, it might be much more effective.” Van Eecke said that legislators who try to rule via standards would end up drawing the conclusion from American cyberlaw luminary Lawrence Lessig’s theory that code is the (new) law and shifts legislators’ attention to standardisation.




[IN OTHER WORDS, COUNSEL IS FISHING FOR NEW CLIENTS THAT FAVOR AN 'OPEN SOURCE' TO KNOWLEDGE (A2K) PARADIGM THAT PAYS LESS THAN EVEN CONCESSION RATE PRICES. TOO BAD HIS CLIENTS WOULD STILL NEED TO PAY HIS BILL EVEN THOUGH THEIR 'OPEN SOURCE' PRODUCTS BRING IN LITTLE PROFIT, IF ANY!!!]


“Yet what you see is that more and more standards are not drafted by organisations that take orders from the EU Commission or governments.” The European Union has tried to build strong EU standardisation bodies by institutionalising the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standardisation Institute (ETSI). Yet instead, more and more standards have been crafted by private standardisation bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force, (IETF), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or industry consortia like the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).










A big step forward, said Van Eecke, would be if the study resulted in a dialogue between organisations and stakeholders in a high-level forum that would decide on what to put into the standards.



Instead of reinventing the wheel and pushing for standards by “official” EU standardisation bodies, EU regulators should join the private standardisation bodies where necessary and try to have the regulators’ policy perspectives reflected in their work, Van Eecke said.



For example, instead of leaving discussions on standards at the IETF to US authorities alone, the European Union should participate and promote its ideas there, too. To have European political standards implemented in technical standards would also mean to possibly give them a global reach. Opening up EU standardisation bodies to more stakeholders also should be considered, Van Eecke said.


[THE EU COMMISSION HAS ALREADY EXPORTED ITS POLITICAL STANDARDS WITHIN OSTENSIBLY PRIVATE INDUSTRY FORESTRY CERTIFICATION & LABELING STANDARDS TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AGAINST FOREIGN WOOD PRODUCT EXPORTS -- SEE: Discerning the Forest From the Trees: How Governments Use Ostensibly Private and Voluntary Standards to Avoid WTO Culpability, at: http://www.itssd.org/GTCJ_03-offprints%20KOGAN%20-%20Discerning%20the%20Forest%20from%20the%20Trees.pdf ] ***



The degree to which it is necessary to have a balance of interests and highly knowledgeable experts representing the public sector in standardisation issues is exemplified by the separate, ongoing fight over US software maker Microsoft’s attempt to get its electronic document format standardised by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).


Other measures recommended by the study point to possible access problems. To get access to official standards is costly and a barrier especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.


Therefore, a new EU standardisation policy should, the study argued, include “a coherent and harmonised (free) availability policy for standards/specifications established by all standards/specification producing organisations within the European standardisation system” and “a thorough study on the relationship between the intellectual property rights and ICT standards to be initiated by the European Commission, the purpose of which should be to launch a global discussion with other global regions.”



The balance between the much wanted law-like standards and IPR is difficult, noted the study, because “the underlying philosophies of standardisation and IPR-protection are seen as opposite. Whereas standardisation intends to put ideas into the public domain, protection of IPR makes them private property.”


[EUREKA!!]


Furthermore, the legal framework of standardisation is blurred, while recognition of private rights over private creations is clear and patent ambushes (patent claims made late in the development of a standardisation process) are prevailing in court cases.



The European Commission so far has tried to alleviate the problem by passing so-called FRAND rules that try to ensure “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” licensing when it comes to standards. A new ETSI IPR policy adopted in 2006 addressed the problem of IPR owners not agreeing to licences, yet the problem still is not really resolved, according to the study.



Van Eecke said the one big success story in mandated EU standardisation on ICTs is the mobile wireless standard, GSM. But he said, “A lot of money has been wasted for licences, even if it has worked out in the end.”



Motorola is said to have had the largest share of GSM relevant patents, with 3,831 mobile patents between 1976 and 2004 (of a total of 10,224 mobile telecommunication patents). While Motorola in the end did not fare as well in the GSM arena as its big rivals which traded their own thousands of patents against the US company, smaller companies did not succeed in entering the mobile phone market, according to experts.


EU initiatives on patent system and open access


The difficulty patents and copyright protection can bring for the competition and the public welfare is highlighted by the investigation of the pharmaceutical sector just announced by the EU Competition Directorate, a strong call for reform of the EU patent system by STOA and the recent announcement of the European Research Council for Open Access to results from public research.


[THIS NEGATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE UTILITY OF PATENTS AND OF THE RELIANCE OF THE PATENT SYSTEM ON THE RECOGNITION OF EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IS IDEOLOGICALLY BASED]**


The pharmaceutical sector inquiry, according to the Commission, was started because “there are indications of commercial practices by pharmaceutical suppliers including notably patenting or the exercise of patents which may not serve to protect innovation but to block innovative and/or generic competition, litigation, which may be vexatious, and agreements, which may be collusive.”

[DITTO]**


In order to check on possible market distortions, the EU competition authority would “use its powers of investigation in particular with respect to pharmaceutical suppliers of innovative and generic medicines for human consumption, consumer and professional organisations in health care, as well as authorities granting patents and marketing authorisations for drugs,” the Commission said.


[THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, IN OTHER WORDS, WILL EXERCISE ITS VAST UNCHECKED POWER TO LAUNCH 'WITCH-HUNTS' AGAINST COMPANIES IN ORDER TO LOCATE & IDENTIFY AN EVIL 'MONOPOLY MARKET FAILURE', DEFINED AS INCLUDING INDIGENOUS INNOVATIONS OWNED BY COMPANIES THAT, DUE TO THE FORCES OF (WHAT SCHUMPETER REFERS TO AS) 'CREATIVE DESTRUCTION', FIND THEMSELVES AS THE ONLY ONES IN THEIR MARKETS OFFERING SUCH TECHNOLOGIES AND/OR PRODUCTS]**


Increasing access to patented inventions in every field was requested by the STOA report on the EU patent system. Authors there recommend “to explore and support more flexible, non-exclusive exercises of patent rights, such as licence of right, patent pools and clearinghouses” that would give access to licensing also to small and medium-sized enterprises not involved in the patent race and therefore not able to bargain with patents of their own.


[THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION APPEALS HERE TO POPULIST SENSIBILITIES IN THEIR ZEST TO GARNER SUPPORT FROM THE SMALL & MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES - HOWEVER, IN ACTUALITY, IT IS THE VERY SAME 'SMEs', WHICH BEING PREVENTED FROM EXERCISING EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THEIR INVENTIONS & INNOVATIONS, CANNOT EXPLOIT PATENTS IN THE EUROPEAN MARKETPLACE]**


The STOA report also holds that defensive publication should become an alternative practice. Instead of patenting their inventions - an effort too costly, for example, for small companies or university research - they should be able to publish their inventions in “publicly-available” databases.


[THIS WILL ONLY FURTHER DISADVANTAGE EUROPEAN SMEs, AS THEIR INNOVATIONS WILL BE LOOKED UPON OPENLY BY MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE AND DEVELOPING COUNTRY PILFERERS!!]


Access to scientific research funded by the European Research Council should be made accessible over appropriate research repositories and made open access within six months of publication, the ERC suggested. The council that has been working on public access issues for some time now wrote that it considers “essential that primary data - which in the life sciences for example could comprise data such as nucleotide/protein sequences, macromolecular atomic coordinates and “anonymized” epidemiological data - are deposited to the relevant databases as soon as possible, preferably immediately after publication and in any case not later than six months after the date of publication.”

China Allows Academics to Own Patents

04 January 2008


RSC Chemistry World


http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/January/04010802.asp


China has revised its 'science and technology constitution' to allow scientists, institutes and universities to own patents arising from publicly-funded research in an effort to boost innovation.


China's legislature - the standing committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) - passed the revised Science and Technology Progress Law on 29 December, changing the fundamental laws guiding research and innovation in the country.


Higher eduction institutions and academics will now for the first time be able to own intellectual property derived from publicly-funded research - providing a new incentive for them to spin-out or license their inventions. The new amendments also say scientists who have not completed scientifically risky projects should not be penalised - as long as their experimental records demonstrate that their chances of success were low.


In addition, the revised law stipulates that industry should play a major role in innovation. It paves the way for the introduction of new funds to support innovation in small and medium-sized businesses and allows companies to carry out publicly-funded R&D.


Zhu Xiaomin, a researcher at the Institute of Policy and Management, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), says that highlighting the role of the private sector could help small firms play a more active role in science and technology. 'The law has also introduced many practicises that are known to spur innovation - such as the endowment of patent ownership.'


The changes to patent ownership rules could be a boon for chemistry researchers. 'In our research, new testing and analysis technologies often emerge as byproducts,' said one scientist at the CAS Institute of Chemistry, who asked not to be named.


But much of China's patent law is still based on the principle that research funders should own patents originating from work they have paid for, he added. Revisions to other laws might now be needed.


Duan Weiwen of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the revised law needs to be followed by details of implementation. For example, the new amendment on research failure will need supporting regulations to distinguish between a 'reasonable' failure and any excuses offered by those who have misused funds.


Duan said China should next change the way it evaluates the quality of publicly-funded research.


Instead of looking at the number of papers researchers have published in high impact journals, he believes there should be a system of peer review to allow scientists to judge whether work is really ground-breaking.


Hepeng Jia