The Ministry of Education and Science proposes to give the Government the right to manage state patents

The Ministry has developed amendments to the Civil Code, which will give the government the authority to establish the procedure for managing exclusive IP rights owned by universities and scientific organizations in order to strengthen the interaction of science, technology and production.

Currently, the high patent activity of universities and scientific organizations has not led to the commercialization of discoveries and inventions. The Ministry of Education and Science hopes that the settlement of the transfer of rights to the commercial sector will help solve this problem. Most patents of state institutions in science are maintained for one to two years, then legal protection is terminated - de facto, during this period, the sale of rights should take place. However, now the Civil Code sets only general standards in the field of IP rights management.

In Russia, where the budget already finances most of the scientific research, in recent years the authorities have tended to shift this burden to business, insisting on the commercialization of research by linking the work of scientists and the needs of the market, but so far, the largest companies are involved in this. "As long as science has a target index in the form of the number of patents, this will not lead to the result needed by business," says Ildar Shaikhutdinov, founder of the Institute for Financial Business Development and a member of the General Council of Delovaya Rossiya. Only a change in motivation can change the current state of affairs — a task for scientists should require not only patents, but also their commercialization, he believes.

According to Sergey Zuykov, patent attorney and managing partner of Zuykov and partners, the government may have two reasons to take IP management away from universities: to show that intellectual property can and should generate income, and to increase the efficiency of budget expenditures. In the meantime, the non-extension of the validity of patents raises doubts about the relevance of the results, he says.

Source: Kommersant