Intellectual Property: Shaping the free market in intellectual goods

Intellectual property is the feedstock of the knowledge economy, but as yet no one has got to grips with managing it to maximise its value and use it to deliver sustained economic growth.

"Europe is a free market for material goods but not for intellectual goods," says Bo Heiden, Deputy Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Studies at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. "We have a European Patent Office, but we don't have a European patent."

Heiden is part of the Intellectual Property Knowledge Network (IPKN) that is working to harmonise legislation and set up coordinated systems and infrastructure for handling and valuing IP generated by life sciences research across Scandinavia and the Baltic. The aim is that IP will be managed and exploited in the same way as the raw materials that fuelled the industrial age.

"The concept of intellectual property collaboration across countries and across companies is no different from other forms of collaboration," says Heiden. "We can derive the same economies of scale if we work together."

Value of cooperation

The value of cooperation and collaboration is acknowledged at the level of carrying out research and development but not in terms of its commercialisation. "You can do a lot of R&D across borders, but unless you have the systems for capitalising on the IP you won’t get the value flowing back to the region," says Heiden.

The IPKN was set up in March 2005 under the auspices of the ScanBalt BioRegion, an industry body representing biotechnology clusters across Scandinavia and the Baltic. Given the spread from former Communist states to some of the most advanced western economies in Europe, there is a patchwork of different legislation and attitudes towards IP.

In the former Communist states there is no pre-existing understanding of intellectual property rights. While this may mean that there are no vested interests to contend with, it also means there are no skills or experience on which to build either.

The objective of the IPKN is to smooth the path for regional cooperation, boosting both the supply of, and the demand for IP. "Inevitably, this is a slow process: you have to build relationships and build trust. And you have to build commitment," says Heiden.

In a region with more 60 universities and around 900 life sciences related companies it is inevitably a slow process to pull together all the disparate strands and reconcile the wide range of interests that are needed to construct a harmonised approach to IP. "We have now been working for one year, and have mapped out the region. We know who the people are [that need help with IP] and who can provide it," says Heiden. The IPKN has begun to run seminars across the region to spread its expertise.

The IPKN is funded for two years under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), and Heiden says it is hoped to get further funding under FP7. One aim for the future is to set up a Technology Transfer Centre where all the region's IP could be put on show. The centre would provide facilities for investors and companies to conduct due diligence and provide services including education and training, and help people pull together IP portfolios that meet identified market needs.

Bioscience is critical for Europe in general, and will be a significant chunk of FP7. But Heiden says the existing model for funding R&D is no longer appropriate. "Currently the incentive to do research is to publish it and be more noted, and improve your career. That's not why people pay tax for R&D. They want to see a return to society. That means packaging research results and using them as a source of wealth creation."