The Ministry of Education and Science invites the government to manage the rights to universities inventions
For the sake of the effectiveness of budget expenditures on scientific and technical development of the Ministry of Education and Science, offers to give the White House the right to determine the procedure for managing the rights of intellectual activity (RID). So far, the high patent activity of universities and scientific organizations does not lead to a commercialization of discoveries and inventions – the department expects that settlement of the transfer of rights to the commercial sector will help to solve this problem.
The Ministry of Education and Science has developed amendments to the Civil Code – they give the government the authority to establish the procedure for managing exclusive rights to universities and scientific organizations the results of intellectual activity in order to strengthen the interaction of science, technology and production. So far, despite the high patenting activity of the public sector in science, the introduction of results into production is rather a rarity. In 2024, Rospatent received 21.5 thousand applications for inventions from Russian applicants, the largest share – 43% – fell on universities and scientific organizations, but the number of transactions with inventions, useful models and industrial models amounted to only 2.5 thousand.
Most of the patents of state institutions in science are supported for one or two years, then legal protection is terminated, the developer emphasizes-de facto for this period and the sale of rights should take place. However, now the Civil Code establishes only general norms in the field of intellectual rights management, the explanatory note is noted, and they do not take into account the restrictions that are valid for budget and autonomous institutions.
The rules for the management of state rights to RID should remove a number of identified Ministry of Education and Science Barriers for Technology Transfer, Kommersant explained in the department.
Among them are the lack of rules for transactions with the Red state budget created at the expense of the state budget and the risks of making claims to them for the inspection bodies. “The determination of the order will reduce investment and legal risks-now the heads of institutions often refuse transactions due to difficulties, including those related to the assessment of RID at the stage of concluding licensing agreements and agreements on the alienation of exclusive law,” the department added.
In the Russian Federation, where the budget and so finances bOin recent years, in recent years, authorities have gravitated to shift this load on business, insisting on commercialization of research by linking the work of scientists and market needs, but so far the largest companies are mainly involved in this (so far (see “Kommersant” dated July 11, 2023). “So far, the science has a target pointer in the form of the number of patents, this will not lead to the result of the necessary business,” says Ildar Shaikhutdinov, the founder of the institution of financial development of businesses, a member of the General Council of Business Russia. In his opinion, it is necessary that the universities, when receiving a grant, must find a customer – a legal entity, which needs and ready to finance development, and the enterprise at the R&D stage could test the product for applicability and the need for improvement. Only a change in motivation can change the current state of affairs – the task for scientists should require not only patents, but also their commercialization, he believes.
According to the patent attorney, the managing partner of Zuikov and Partners, Sergei Zuykov, the government may have two reasons to take Red management from universities: to show that intellectual property can and should bring income and increase the efficiency of budget costs. In the meantime, the non -transmission of the timing of the patents is in doubt about the demand for the results, he says.
