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.
USPTO becomes a partner in international green-technology platform, WIPO GREEN
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) became a technology partner to the global green-technology platform of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO GREEN is a public-private partnership established by WIPO in 2013. Its 145 international partners include major technology companies, intellectual property (IP) offices, business groups, research institutes, and nongovernmental organizations.
The USPTO’s contributions to WIPO GREEN include its own initiatives that are designed to address the challenge of climate change, including:
- The USPTO Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program, which accelerates the examination of patent applications involving innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- The soon-to-be-announced Patents for Humanity: Clean Energy Technologies awards competition, a green technology–focused version of the USPTO’s highly successful Patents for Humanity awards competition
Click here to read more.
Online Seminar on the Intellectual Property Gender Gap in the European Region
Inclusive innovation ecosystems are a priority for Innovation Council. It is for this reason that we have collaborated with WIPO and Invent Together on preparing these high-level policy panels that will take place on May 31 and June 1.
The event will focus on the importance of designing policies addressing the IP gender gap and engaging women’s participation in the innovation ecosystems of the European region.
Click here for online registration.
Gender and IP Literature
Innovation Council has created a running list of resources on various issues related to Gender and IP, based on work by Morgan Schreur
Slideshow: Measuring the Gender Gap in Innovation
Monitoring the share of women inventing, creating, and innovating is essential to develop appropriate policy responses to the innovation-related gender participation gap. Yet, several national and international innovation and IP data sources lack any type of gender breakdown.
This slideshow reviews the different ways to get innovation and IP data with gender breakdown.
IFPMA event on March 8th – Women Innovators in Africa
The virtual event, titled “Women-led innovation in Africa: Achieving sustainable health and gender equality on the continent” will take place in March to mark International Women’s Day. The event will demystify the notion that women have a limited role in innovation, celebrating the contribution made by women leaders, innovators, and creators to the development of societies and economies. The underpinning argument is that, without the considerable and equal participation of women in policymaking, business and innovation, it will be impossible to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
Join IFPMA, Speak Up Africa, and African women driving innovation and making advancements to achieve the SDGs on Tuesday, 08 March from 09:00-11:00 GMT / 10:00-12:00 CET. The panel will be part of Speak Up Africa’s broader African LeadHERs Forum. This virtual, two-hour moderated panel discussion will be held on Zoom, and interpretation from English to French will be available.
Slideshow: Extending Bio-manufacturing Networks in Africa and IP and Covid
This slideshow presents key messages from the recent Innovation Council – Bobab online discussion about extending bio-manufacturing networks in emerging regions, notably Africa. The discussion on February 8th featured Prof. Mark Schultz of the University of Akron School of Law, Anissa Boumlic of Merck Life Science, and Simon Agwale of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative. Click here for the video of the event, and click here to review a transcript of the event.
Invent Together advocate in favor of the IDEA Act
Invent Together is a coalition of organizations, universities, companies, and other stakeholders dedicated to understanding the diversity gaps in invention and patenting. It aims to support public policy and private initiatives working to close the diversity gap. They have been supporting the adoption of the Inventor Diversity for Economic Advancement (IDEA) Act, which would require the USPTO to collect data on inventors’ demographic data on a voluntary basis and make this information available in the aggregate for research.
The IDEA Act has recently passed the House as part of the America COMPETES Act. As the House and Senate negotiate a compromise, Invent Together is calling for Congress to keep the IDEA Act in the final version sent to President Biden’s office.
Invent Together has written a sign-on letter urging congressional leadership to keep the IDEA Act in the final innovation and competition bill which can be found here.
Bobab discussion about bio-manufacturing in emerging regions
The Innovation Council and Bobab organised a discussion on expanding BioManufacturing production capacity in emerging regions. Biologics, a category of pharmaceuticals which includes products such as vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments, are quickly becoming among the most important medical products in the world. By combining enabling government policies and technology transfer between innovators and their global partners, it will be possible to improve availability of biologics, increase health security, and enhance scientific and industrial capacity in developing countries.
Click here to see the transcript.
5G and FRAND: Licenses are key to a future of Innovation
Although consumers may feel they are yet to feel the transformative impact of 5G, the infrastructure underpinning its wider rollout is being developed quickly and on a significant scale. With such development, we are quickly approaching the much-heralded 5G era, where we will see more of the opportunities from 5G come to fruition. As a result, the digital ecosystem will become available in many more corners of everyday life.