[Ip-health] Intellectual bottlenecks

[Pranesh Prakash]

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Dear all,
Amit Shovon Ray and Sabyasachi Saha take a look at why the PUPFIP Bill
(the "Indian Bayh-Dole" bill) is ill-imagined, and how science and
technology in India have other bottlenecks that need to be worked on
instead.

Regards,
Pranesh

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/intellectual-bottlenecks/567807/0

AMIT SHOVON RAY and SABYASACHI SAHA take stock of the state of R&D in India

Intellectual bottlenecks
AMIT SHOVON RAY, SABYASACHI SAHA
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010

India=E2=80=99s strive towards self-reliance shaped its post-independence p=
olicy
agenda in all spheres. The pursuit of science and technology under
government patronage was an integral part of this agenda, which led to
the establishment of universities and institutes of higher learning and
research as well as publicly funded S&T organisations. However,
aggregate R&D expenditure in India has remained rather low at less than
1% of its GDP.

A quick international comparison in the accompanying table reveals that
developed countries on an average spend over 2% of their GDP on R&D, a
cut above India=E2=80=99s spending. China spends 1.4% of its GDP on R&D, ag=
ain
ahead of India. Interestingly, however, the lion=E2=80=99s share (nearly 75=
%) of
India=E2=80=99s R&D expenditure is publicly funded and only a quarter is bo=
rne
by the private sector.

Despite this concerted effort, India has not succeeded in reaching the
global frontiers of cutting edge research in science. Moreover, our
industry has also not benefited significantly from home-grown
technologies with university-industry interface remaining sub-optimal.
Publicly funded research has not adequately contributed to the process
of technological learning and catch-up by the

Indian industry. Indeed, inventions generated from publicly funded
research in India, however sporadic and few they may be, remain largely
unnoticed by the industry. Even when noticed, such inventions are not
picked up due to heavy development costs and uncertainties. This is not
to suggest that Indian policymakers did not realise the importance of
publicly funded scientific research and the possible role it could play
in boosting industrial competitiveness.

Keeping in mind the low levels of effective university-industry
technology transfer in India, a possible corrective step was conceived
in terms of a legal framework for intellectual property rights (IPRs) in
the academic sector (publicly funded research).The idea was first mooted
by the National Knowledge Commission in 2007 and was adopted by the
government through the introduction of a new legislation, along the
lines of the US Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. The Protection and Utilisation of
Public Funded IP Bill 2008 is presently with the Parliament. The Bill
seeks to assign the ownership rights of publicly funded patents to
universities in order to facilitate their commercialisation by
incentivising the industry and assuring them exclusive license rights
for further development and marketing. Moreover, it is through this law
that the government also seeks to incentivise and energise creativity
and innovation in publicly funded research.

Although patenting is still relatively uncommon among academic
researchers in India, some of the S&T organisations, particularly within
the CSIR network, have put in place institutional frameworks for
patenting research outputs. It may be noted that the number of US
patents granted to CSIR jumped to 196 in 2005-06 from just 6 in 1990-91.
On the other hand, India=E2=80=99s contribution to the world publications h=
as
increased from 2.1% during 1995-2000 to 2.3% during 2000-05. Although
the effective contribution of Indian scientists in the international
scientific community has gone up, India=E2=80=99s impact factor is not yet =
at
par with the world average in most scientific fields, except for physics
where it has made significant gains with an impact factor of 3.1 during
2003-07.

For a long time, concerns related to intellectual property rights did
not bother Indian academic scientists. In a recent econometric study,
the authors explored some of the less understood relationships that
explain faculty inclination towards patenting in Indian universities.
These include the importance of faculty background and attitude. Faculty
with a doctoral degree from abroad are more inclined to patenting. The
dynamism of the younger generation of faculty combined with academic
maturity of the professorial level is the ideal combination for
encouraging university patenting. Faculty with a positive attitude
towards research supervision and a larger team of research students
engage more in patenting their research.

Policymakers in India have been arguing that the absence of a clear IPRs
framework prevents the industry from accepting university inventions.
Literature on the US experience post-Bayh Dole, however, does not
present an unambiguous picture in this regard. Evidence suggests that
although the decades that followed saw a huge rise in university held
patents, there was only a modest increase in their licensing and that
too mostly for a few top-ranking universities. Given the heterogeneity
in the quality and content of publicly funded research in India, it
remains to be seen how a uniform IP law for all publicly funded
organisations could be tailored to suit every tier of the quality
spectrum, if at all. Different constituencies are expected to respond
differently to a new institutional/legal framework. It is in this
context that one fears that a =E2=80=98one size fits all=E2=80=99 approach =
could be
counterproductive.

Policymakers also argue that IP rights vested with individual
universities are more efficient as they reduce direct bureaucratic
control from funding agencies. However, in India funding agencies have
rarely staked IP claims in the first place. CSIR, for example, holds
patent rights for all publicly funded research outputs and has also
licensed them exclusively in some cases. Therefore, possible bottlenecks
in the process of commercialisation of publicly funded patents in India
cannot be directly linked to IP ownership per se.

IPRs have so far been acting as a viable business proposition for
knowledge-based industries where production of knowledge essentially
depends on the extent to which it can be appropriated. But would such
business models work for universities? Universities in the West have
tried out operational business models for encouraging university
scientists to become entrepreneurs with equity shareholding in
spin-offs. This worked well in some cases (e.g.,Silicon Valley around
Stanford and Route 128 near MIT). Nevertheless, universities are known
to conventionally follow an altogether different model of knowledge
creation that goes beyond private appropriation paving the way for wider
dissemination through publication and teaching. It remains true that
university scientists=E2=80=99 own urge towards solving research puzzles wo=
uld
continue to be the dominant driver of their research. Indeed, excessive
focus on career advancement often proves counterproductive for faculty=E2=
=80=99s
research performance as far as their individual publication rates are
concerned.

Going beyond IPR, a more fundamental bottleneck hindering
university-industry technology transfer in India is a mismatch of
research temperament and a lack of understanding between the two. Indian
industry is often myopic and averse to taking risks. On the other hand,
industry has always alleged that university research in India is too
tangential to have direct commercial applications. Therefore, there may
be further need to explore possibilities of appropriate profile-matching
between the two to achieve successful university-industry technology
transfer in the long-run.

Under these circumstances, implementing laws for promoting university
patenting might lead to another futile public policy exercise resulting
in filing and maintaining large unutilised government patents at the
cost of public money. Introduction of an =E2=80=98Indian=E2=80=99 Bayh-Dole=
 for
energising academic research that overlooks the realities of the
differences in context, environment, culture and level of scientific
achievements between the US and India might be tantamount to putting the
cart before the horse.

Amit Shovon Ray is professor, JNU and Chair Professor, Icrier. His
coauthor Sabyasachi Saha is researcher, Icrier. Views are personal.

--
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283

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