Workpackage 2

Governance of Production and Technologies

Objectives:

To compare the different roles that IP rights plays in the agricultural and ICT industries (considered as platform technologies) as a means to incentivise the creation, the introduction and the dissemination of new products in the relevant markets; to make recommendations on how SMEs should make use of the information generated by IP databases and other public resources from each one of the industry sectors for their research activities, and on how to manage their IP portfolio in each of these sectors. Attention will also be put on how the regulatory framework might be adapted in order to meet challenges such as climate change, poverty, and to foster social welfare, and more innovation in these sectors.

Description of Work and Role of Specific Beneficiaries and Partner Organisations:

The research projects ESR4 (Beneficiaries UA and UM, partner organisation oriGIn) and ESR5 (Beneficiaries UM and UA, partner organisation CPVO and ESA) are complementary: they deal with three different forms of intellectual property rights available to agricultural products (patents, plant variety rights, geographical indications). ESR 6 (Beneficiaries QMUL and UM, partner organisations EFPIA and Hovione) addresses the pharmaceutical sector, whereas ESR 7 (Beneficiaries MIPLC and UA, partner organisations Ericsson and ETSI as an important player regarding telecommunications infrastructure equipment) focuses on standard-setting organisations in the ICT sector.