Technology transfers in the patent world are often referred to as assignments or licenses depending on the degree and severability of the interest being exchanged. Our current patent system encourages the disclosure of ideas— with a policy regime that seeks to balance incentivizing with serving the public interest and continuing the development of ideas, processes, designs, and plants. Institutions known for developing products, ideas and research commonly advertise the social boons of their hard work. Government agencies, research universities, and start-ups claim to devote their resources and ingenuity to benefiting the world. It is somewhat rare for researchers to develop ideas without interacting with other scientists or organizations, outside of isolated skunkworks, a concept that seems increasingly maligned. Indeed, one can download a form to license a patent from NASA. Provided one is willing to produce products domestically, an exclusive license costs $50,000 and average annual royalty fees range from 3-7%. The FDA regularly develops and licenses its own patents, some of which made award-winning impacts on public health. Recent collaborative development of a meningitis-A vaccine has protected hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa from deadly disease. Agencies and corporations are encouraged to embrace cooperative R&D agreements, and make provisions and processes for transfers of material intellectual property. Some examples of agency specific programs include Technology Investment Agreements, Biological Materials Licenses, and Partnership Intermediary Agreements, all designed to induce and speed the process of collaborating among institutions. Research universities consistently produce developments that migrate into the public sphere through the patenting process. “Publish or perish” is the mantra of many academics, and fights for funding can be bitter and political. Resource allocation among research universities is tightly bound to its winning departments, but arguments for change are gaining sway. If just a few percent of research budgets were transferred to the development and technology transfer pipeline, this could create substantive benefits in the industrial and public health sectors. There is a realm of forbidden arts in the innovation industry, where corporate secrets are leaked, patent trolls stymie productivity, governments unfairly subsidize research and corporations are forced to sign over their methods in exchange for access to markets. For example, throughout classical antiquity, Chinese imperial authorities and their client states were often credited with guarding the state secrets of silk production technology. Conversely, in the past few years, the Chinese multinational corporation Huawei has been in talks to freely disclose its 5G technology, patents and trade secrets. Nowadays, it is the U.S. using export controls to limit technology transfers to competitors, with inconsistent results. Indeed, despite such restrictions, Huawei has been able to acquire billions of dollars in technology licensing from U.S companies—and billions of dollars in semiconductor components. The goals of different institutions and governments are clashing against rigid intellectual property laws, corporate interests and public interest. An emerging landscape of intellectual property mercantilism is revealing itself in an environment where innovation and global strategy conflict. --Andrew J. Ladenheim, 1L UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2021
Categories |