Intellectual property practitioners join forces across institutional lines to find better ways of increasing adoption of research products

The National Partners Initiative (NPI) brought together intellectual property (IP) practitioners at a meeting in January 2009 in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. Participants agreed that the meeting — and the fledgling association that it solidified — energized their efforts, renewed their commitment and improved their ability to tackle thorny IP issues in the complex environment of publicly funded research.

Group discussion at the National Partners Initiative (NPI) meeting held at Mombasa, Kenya, in January 2009.

IP practitioners often work alone, and many Centers supported by the CGIAR and often their national partners have only one person dealing with IP policy. Capacity is therefore highly restricted. NPI, which was initiated and supported by the CGIAR Central Advisory Service for Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) and funded by the Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands, allows these practitioners to build capacity with the support of a professional peer group and a wide body of knowledge and information.

NPI began in 2007 with individual representatives from CGIAR Centers and their national partner counterparts. Today, it has about 40 members representing 10 CGIAR Centers and their national partner colleagues, one international agricultural research institute outside of the CGIAR and its national partner, and a South-South partnership between two national agricultural research institutes in India and Nigeria, in addition to other interested IP practitioners.

Intellectual property management is a tricky concept when applied to public goods such as those produced by the CGIAR and its partners. Many researchers do not understand what IP management in the CGIAR entails or its relevance to agricultural research. Many mistakenly believe that intellectual property simply does not apply to publicly funded research. Yet an IP issue that affects many CGIAR scientists is authorship and attribution. During the meeting in January, participants had a lively debate on this very issue, as the group needed to answer this question for a publication that had been produced by the entire group.

NPI meeting participants, Mombasa, Kenya, January 2009.

Some of the questions raised were (1) who should be listed as an author, (2) who should be listed as a co-author, (3) at what point an editor’s amendments constitute co-authorship, and (4) what kind of restrictions, if any, should be applied to the copyright for third parties. A seemingly straightforward concept such as copyright suddenly became much more complicated in a real-life context — even to a roomful of IP practitioners.

As science is competitive, career progression, morale and end-user impact can be affected if work receives no formal recognition. NPI participants offered a range of comments about the effect of IP — or the lack of it — on publicly funded research.

 “A colleague of mine developed a testing kit,” reported Chutima Ratanasatien, of the Thai Department of Agriculture. “It was released without any protection. The scientist received no credit or recognition, and neither did her institute. This is bad for innovation and staff morale.”

“Breeders work hard to develop new varieties,” observed Patrick Ngwediagi, of the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and Cooperatives. “Plant variety protection gives breeders incentives and boosts their innovativeness.”

 “An IP office ensures the institution is in line with current practices outside the institute, which improves the quality of the institute,” commented Hanumanth Rao, of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India.

“IP has helped the potential for commercializing R&D products,” said Rafeah Rahman, of the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI). “It has added value to R&D and shown that the output has a certain quality standard.”

“Now that we pay more attention to IP clauses in agreements, everyone has a greater understanding of their roles and responsibilities,” concluded Wahida Shah, of the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya. “Our institute now takes a more proactive role in clarifying roles. The result is greater mutual understanding.”

Participants further reported that NPI has benefitted its members by building confidence and authority, legitimizing their work and making their voices heard, providing a group of peers in developing countries to whom they can turn for advice that is unavailable from national colleagues, encouraging the realization of projects that have long been on the drawing board, and building their reputation as experts with international experience.

Further information about NPI is available on the web at:
www.cas-ip.org/index.php/projects/npi, http://casipblog.wordpress.com (search for items tagged “NPI”),  www.cgiar.org/enews/october2007/story_11.html,
and at the CAS-IP YouTube Channel, www.youtube.com/user/CGIARCASIP.
For more information about CAS-IP, visit www.cas-ip.org.