LawBytes Podcast – Episode 20 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.
Michael Geist:
This is Law Bytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.
AUTM:
Universities hospitals and research centers conduct a lot of research that generates groundbreaking inventions that not only save lives but improve the way we live. Work and play on a daily basis. Technology transfer plays a central role in bringing these ideas from the lab to the market.
Michael Geist:
Technology transfer in the university context has emerged as a significant policy issue with governments seeking to maximize the benefits of public investment in research at Canadian universities. For example, the Ford government in Ontario recently launched an expert panel on intellectual property that squarely focused on the issue. A government release stated that the panel quote will deliver a report on how Ontario can maximize commercialization opportunities for the post-secondary sector and its partners included in the expert panel report will be an action plan for a provincial intellectual property framework. But what if maximizing commercialization opportunities does not mean prioritizing patents. This week’s guest on the podcast, Professor Richard Gold from McGill University’s Faculty of Law, argues that universities should get out of the patenting game. He joins me to discuss the failure of patent first strategies within universities and why open science may offer a better path for commercialization success.
Michael Geist:
Richard thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
Richard Gold:
Well thank you Michael for inviting me.
Michael Geist:
I’m really glad you’ve come on. The question of commercialization of intellectual property within the university environment has been a big policy issue for a long time and as you know better than just about anybody, many have advocated for increased commercialization more intellectual property especially on the patent side and universities are increasingly pressured to justify public investments in research through metrics like spin offs patents and other intellectual property. And this issue is getting even renewed focus in Ontario with the creation of an expert panel on IP and a lot of talk about maximizing commercialization. So that’s where much of the discussion seems to be at least in the media and amongst some of the politicians and policymakers. But you’ve written that universities should consider getting out of the patent business. And so I wanted to start there. Let’s talk about universities patents and the approach that we’ve seen for a long time. You think the focus on patents and commercialization has been the wrong approach. Why is that?
Richard Gold:
Well I think it was a really good idea forty years ago. We said look we’re producing a lot of knowledge at the universities. The government is putting a lot of money into research. We want to translate this in to economic growth. We want to have companies come out of Canada and become world leaders. We’re now 40 years later and I challenge you to name a Canadian company that has a large scale market that came out of a university. We’ve had a few they’ve all either been sold or gone under. When we think about BlackBerry it was not a spin off out of the university. So we’ve had 40 years of failure. It was a good idea. It just doesn’t work. And it’s time now to think about why it doesn’t work. What’s missing and we can look to the United States where this idea originated and we see you know it’s not working even particularly well there in the US about 84 percent of universities lose money on tech transfer and there are about 15, 16 universities that have generated real companies. It’s not like this idea hasn’t done anything, but it hasn’t done really well. And so we should be looking at alternatives that will do better. And I think today with our communication systems are deep deep interlinking both through technology through networks that university professors have created. I mean look at scientific publications there are often many many people on the team from different institutions. It’s time to look at a different model and that model in my view at least one part of that model means getting out of the patent business. We’ve done a poor job at it. Let’s try something different.
