Enabling Innovation Policies

Innovation ecosystems are complex. They involve many actors, which must be motivated to invest in risky new ventures with no guarantee of success. They rest on a foundation of enabling policies in areas including intellectual property, trade, investment, rule of law, and education. A productive innovation ecosystem provides legal certainty and predictability for innovators. IP protection and enforcement frameworks are important in this regard. Patent rules should be business-model neutral and aimed at supporting innovation over the long-term. Trade secret protection, which can help innovators to manage valuable, confidential information, is particularly relevant for SMEs and individual inventors. Rules that enable public and private sector entities to share knowledge and jointly commercialize R&D can ensure that breakthroughs don’t sit on the shelf. Through Innovation Council, members weigh in on the range of policies that can advance innovation across sectors and regions.

Identifying IP Challenges Globally

The EU and United States publish reports about IP protection and enforcement challenges faced by their innovators in different markets. These reports are considered by some to be controversial, for the types of IP issues they raise and for giving rise to some political discomfort.  The reports play a key role in signalling challenges that IP owners – whether trademark, copyright, patent, or trade secrets owners – report around the world, so they can be evaluated and addressed in policy discussions and negotiations.

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