Legal Brief has a brief on the unconstitutionality of the proposed regulations to be made ito of the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research Act, linking back to my post made on Monday.
Eve Gray has written an excellent analysis of what is at stake in a blogpost ‘IPR Bill Regulations promulgated – the death knell for open science in South Africa?’ in which she recaps the provisions of the Act:
” 1. The central provision of the Act is that universities carrying out research from public funds have to assess and report on all research carried out in the university that might have the potential for IPR protection and commercialisation. (Which being translated means they are patentable – but beware; it means more than that, as set out below.)
2. If the university/researcher does not want to lock down the IP in the research, then this decision has to be made according to the guidelines provided by the national IP Management Office (NIMPO) and it has to be notified of this decision. NIMPO then reviews this decision and can, if it disagrees with the university, acquire ownership of and obtain statutory protection for the IP in this research. In other words, the university and its researchers no longer have the right to make their own decisions on how best to ensure the impact of their research.
3. Research funded by private organisations only counts as not being publicly funded if the full cost of the research is covered, including all direct and indirect costs (15b). ”
Eve’s analysis is based on decades of experience in scholarly communication, her most recent blogpost is linked to five previous posts in which she has examined the genesis and likely consequences of the Act, and she raises very important concerns about the proposed regulations. Read it.
