A new European Commission report addresses the sometimes conflicting requirements of Open Science and the protection of intellectual property.
As the principles of Open Science take hold and are adopted more broadly throughout the research community, it brings to light new dynamics in the relationship to knowledge valorisation. Enhancing the synergies between the management of intellectual property (IP) and Open Science takes on an increased importance. A new report, commissioned by the European Commission, offers recommendations for both policy makers and for knowledge transfer professionals on how to balance the promotion of Open Science with IP protection for better knowledge dissemination.
While Open Science fosters cooperation in research and new ways of distributing research results, IP legislation seeks to balance the rights of creators and inventors with the wider interests and needs of society. The combination of the two raises challenges in the management of knowledge outcomes in this evolving research and innovation community, hence should be addressed in the EU’s IP strategy. The report provides input into this ongoing process, presenting reflections on how to reconcile the sometimes conflicting demands of incentivising the work of discovery with the larger public interest.
This report provides a critical analysis of the literature on the relation between Open Science and IP protection, and how they might co-exist in harmony. It does so by scoping the statement ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. The starting point for the analysis rests on a set of hypotheses: (i) There are no incompatibilities between IP rights and OS, if correctly defined; (ii) the European Commission has a role in promoting OS and its balance with IP rights protection; and (iii) existing best practices have to be a source of inspiration.
On the one hand, the report underlines that the existing scientific literature and reports on Open Science do not systematically address IP issues as a key element in reviewing the establishment of Open Science. Indeed it emphasises that the link between stronger IP protections and innovation could benefit from more data and quantitative analysis (although the EC’s IP Action Plan provides data on the use of IP – see SwissCore article). On the other hand, the report recommends to policy makers that current IPR standards and regimes should keep up with rapid technological developments. With legal provisions that offer online protection, basic science should be promoted on account of its essential importance for applied science. Furthermore, an Office for Free Intellectual Property Rights and Open Science should be created, inspired by the model of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights (EU 386/2012). This could be piloted through the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. The report outlines additional recommendations for practitioners, in particular drawing lessons from the open software community, and looking closely at how public research-performing organisations and industrial partnerships are striking a balance between IPR and open knowledge.
These reflections are timely as opening up research processes and science leads us towards a promising transformation of the way we do science. We currently continue to carry out, publish, finance, attribute and evaluate research in the same way as in the last century, despite the various paradigm shifts in the creation of a new digital society that challenge old regulations, including the traditional IP rights regime.