понеделник, 24 октомври 2011 г.

Intellectual property commercialization - UN study - Комерсиализация на интелектуалната собственост - изследване на ООН


Икономическата комисия на ООН за Европа публикува интересно изследване озаглавено „Intellectual property commercialization. Policy options and practical instruments” от септември 2011 година.
Документа обхваща различни теми свързани с ролята на интелектуалната собственост за иновациите, комерсиализацията на IP активите, технологичният трансфер, оценката на интелектуалната собственост и др.
Представянето на изследването е:

Intellectual property is a key concern in the quest for growth, development and competitiveness. Advancement in knowledge broadly conceived is a key driver of economic prosperity in the twenty-first century. The ongoing revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has dramatically reduced the costs of creating, processing and transmitting knowledge, both nationally and across borders. The pace of innovation has accelerated significantly. These twin developments, of closer international economic integration and more rapid innovation, create new challenges for IP regimes and policymaking. To be competitive in the globalized economy, the UNECE Member States have to maintain, adapt and create institutional and legal frameworks conducive to the creation of knowledge and its commercialization. Intellectual property rights have a key role to play in this regard. At the same time, both the innovation process itself, and the production activities of firms are globalizing rapidly. This raises challenges in terms of managing, protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights across borders. Countries with economies in transition face additional challenges to integrate into the
increasingly global production networks and to find their own niche in the increasingly global
value chains. To be successful, they need to assign high priority to developing their own
innovative capacities, as well as their ability to absorb and adapt technological innovations from
abroad, and to move up the value chain over time. Again, IP regimes have a key role to play in
this regard. Well-designed intellectual property rights systems give temporary exclusive rights to inventors and thereby increase their chances to recover the often substantial upfront investments they need to make to generate innovations and to bring them to market. Intellectual property rights systems should also make it possible for innovators to sell, license or give away the rights to their innovations to others, who may be better placed to exploit them. In other words, intellectual property rights are a key prerequisite for intellectual assets to emerge in markets. Well-designed intellectual property rights systems also encourage innovators to disclose their knowledge so that future innovators can build on it, thereby helping to accelerate the rate of innovation.
However, a balance has to be struck between the need to give temporary exclusive rights to
innovators so that they can recover their investments, and the need to make new knowledge
available for use by future innovators and competitors.
The countries with economies in transition are in the process of developing and adapting
their IP regimes with a view to meeting these challenges. They are undertaking commitments in
the framework of the treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), accession negotiations to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and/or Partnership
Agreements with the European Union. At the same time, these treaties and agreements still leave
significant scope for policymaking at the national level.
A well-designed and well-performing intellectual property regime is not an end in itself, but a tool to improve the innovative capacity and competitiveness of the economy. Policymakers should therefore ensure that practices and policies targeting improvements in the intellectual
property regime are consistent with and integrated into a larger effort to improve the policy, legal and regulatory framework promoting innovation and competitiveness. The effectiveness of the intellectual property regime depends in large part on progress made in the design and governance of national innovation systems, the creation of suitable framework conditions for the financing of innovation, and the promotion of innovative„ entrepreneurs and SMEs. While these issues are beyond the scope of the present document, they are being addressed within the other thematic areas of the CECI Programme of Work.
Given that the effectiveness of IP policies depends on the broader policy, regulatory and legal environment, any policy recommendations regarding the development of IP regimes in countries with economies in transition need to be considered as part of a thorough analysis of the relevant conditions prevailing in the respective national economies. Beyond the design of the legal framework, intellectual property can contribute effectively to knowledge-based economic development only if the key stakeholders in the innovation process have the capacity to actually make optimal use of the intellectual property system. Even in the leading innovative economies of the UNECE region, research time and again finds that by far not all stakeholders have this capacity. The innovation process, i.e. the process of turning inventions and other forms of new knowledge into production processes, product or services which are commercially successful and generate new jobs and economic growth, is far from automatic. It is fraught with business risks and frequently requires massive capital investments over long periods of time.
Strategic management of intellectual property can be a very important factor in managing
the innovation process successfully. However, research organizations and small and mediumsized enterprises frequently lack the skills and sometimes also the incentives to manage
intellectual property strategically and to maximize its impact on innovation. The present Review
therefore specifically discusses IP management in universities and other public research.
organizations, and in innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. Rather than providing a
detailed analysis of legal frameworks, the Report focuses on the challenges which research
organizations and SMEs face in using the IP system, and on the policy options available to support them in this. Interdependencies exist across various IP policies. For instance, policies aimed at improving IP management capabilities at research organizations or small enterprises are unlikely to have a big impact unless the legal protection of IP is sufficiently strong and enforcement of IPRs is effective. Policies aimed at strengthening legal protection of IP and enforcement of IPRs are unlikely to enhance economy-wide innovative capacity and competitiveness if potential innovators lack the awareness, skills or resources to access the legal IP system or to manage their IP judiciously. Policy should therefore address simultaneously weaknesses in the IP regime along the entire spectrum from the management of IP in research organizations, enterprises and financial firms to the legal and institutional system for IP protection, and to IPR enforcement.

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English version

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe published an interesting study entitled "Intellectual property commercialization. Policy options and practical instruments ", September 2011.
It covers various topics related to the role of intellectual property for innovation, commercialization of IP assets, technology transfer, intellectual property valuation and others.
The presentation of the study is:

The entire text of the survey can be found here.