Today, at a conference where I was invited to speak, I met up with a speaker from one of the local universities and we got talking about how the different local universities handled their Intellectual Property. For many universities IP is a new area and they have had to (and some are still trying to) develop in house policies and processes in how to manage and commercialise their IP. Different universities are independently developing their own approach and it struck me that there was no co-ordination and co-operation between them.
Why can’t the government take the lead to have one university develop a good working approach in how to manage and commercialise their IP and then roll it out to other universities? This will result in a more consistent approach towards management and commercialisation of IP in the public universities and avoid a lot of duplication of work (if each university is to do it itself). Of course, the common approach may be tweaked by each university to best fit their institutional culture and goals.
Although there might be a sense of healthy rivalry between universities (perhaps this inhibits the co-operation?), this should be confined to the Researh & Development level. At the policy and management level relating to IP, the universities as a whole would benefit from a more unified approach rather than being fragmented as the situation now is.
Posted by: John Chong on 6/4/2005 10:43:01 AM