Commercialising research

The proposed legislation to empower state-funded research institutions, including universities, to commercialise their inventions, if carefully framed and enforced, can help boost science as well as science-based industrialisation. Optimism on this count emanates from the fact that the Bill drafted for this purpose, on the initiative of the National Knowledge Commission, seeks to encourage public sector research organisations to patent their inventions and offer them to industry for commercialisation on a revenue-sharing basis. While 30 per cent of the revenue from the use of the innovations is proposed to go to the inventor, 10 per cent will accrue to the institutions for ploughing back into upgrading the research infrastructure. The government, being the financier of the research, will keep the march-in rights, allowing it to issue compulsory licences for the production of any product in the public interest.

These provisions spell a win-win situation for all "" researchers, research bodies and the government. The measure may, therefore, provide a much-needed reward-linked incentive for scientists and the research organisations to undertake result-oriented research. This motivation is mostly missing at present in government research institutions. Besides, the new system should also help improve the flow of new innovations and discoveries from the laboratories to the marketplace, accelerating the pace of science- and innovation-based industrialisation. And most importantly, it could reduce the public-funded research bodies' coyness about joining hands with private entrepreneurs for earning revenue. In the process, it can facilitate the recovery of a part of the expenditure on research.

However, there is a downside to the scheme which should not be disregarded. The first point to realise is that the proposed legislation is neither the first of its kind nor wholly original in concept and content. It is based, to a substantial extent, on the US Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which is not flawless. That statute was enacted against the backdrop of the government enjoying the exclusive ownership of all patents granted to innovations flowing from state-funded research; this acted as a major impediment in the way of the commercial exploitation of these discoveries. However, in India, the situation regarding the government's control over the research products of state-funded institutions is somewhat ambiguous, and not as clear-cut as it was in the US prior to this Act. Some institutes, including those engaged in agricultural research, are now becoming more conscious of intellectual property protection and have started offering their products for commercialisation with provisions for revenue flow-back. The legislation now on the anvil would essentially legalise what has already begun happening, albeit not on the desired scale, and provide the needed impetus to this trend.

Meanwhile, caution is needed to avert any negative fall-out of the kind that emanated from the Bayh-Dole Act in the US. Linking scientists (read innovators) directly with commercial organisations for technology transfer, with provisions for monetary returns, has resulted in certain cases in the emergence of vested interests among researchers and research bodies, and even favouritism in selecting commercial partners. More significantly, the law has proved to be a distinct disincentive for conducting fundamental research because, despite its critical importance, such research does not offer much scope for commercialisation and revenue generation. If the Indian law can have provisions to preclude such an adverse fall-out, it will be all the more welcome.