IMI was launched in May 2007, and from the beginning stakeholder groups expressed concerns about intellectual property rights policy and funding. The EU is putting €1 billion in cash into the programme – which is intended to fund SMEs and academic researchers. The second €1 billion comes in the form of “in kind” contributions from the large pharmaceutical companies involved in the initiative for research they will carry out in house.
The concerns have been repeated on several occasions and have been transmitted to the IMI Member States Group, the IMI Joint Undertaking (JU) Governing Board and the European Commission.
The IMI JU is currently reviewing its intellectual property policy and the funding rules for reimbursement of indirect costs. Now a group of IMI stakeholders has published a joint statement to ensure that long-standing concerns from all key stakeholders are addressed.
The statement is signed by 11 bodies including the industry and research associations Asebio in Spain, SwedenBIO, BIO Deutschland, FlandersBio, Bio.be, EARTO, which represents European research and technology organisations; the European Universities Association and Germany’s Helmholtz Association and Leibniz Association.
The statement says that IMI has already launched two calls for proposals and is preparing a third call. Participation in the first two calls has been well below potential, because many organisations – SMEs, research organisations and universities – have not participated fully because of concerns about the complex and potentially unbalanced IP policy and unattractive funding model. “The programme is unlikely to achieve its objectives if participation remains sub-optimal,” the statement says.
Stakeholders wish to see IMI’s IP policy revised in order to provide for:
reasonable definition of research use and of access rights for third parties;
less extensive access rights for participants and affiliated entities worldwide,
or at least better control of access rights by the owner;
fair conditions for access (time limit, request in writing, fair and reasonable
terms rather than royalty free);
and more balanced and reasonable conditions for licensing, assignment and other disposal of own assets, following the FP7 model (II.26.3 IMI GA).
These central issues have also been identified by the IMI IP Working Group but a resolution is still pending, and the statement says that with the deadline for the third call rapidly approaching, it is crucial that real improvements are introduced, “as a matter of urgency”.
The IMI funding model needs to be sufficiently competitive to attract the best players and to allow SMEs to engage effectively in large numbers. IMI funding rules should be modelled on FP7 funding rules and the starting point for calculating funding rates should be coverage of the full costs of research. “The current 20 per cent cap on the reimbursement of indirect research costs ignores economic reality,” the statement says.
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