Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa whose work focuses on IP and technology innovation, but my views here today are my own, not those of my institution or my colleagues necessarily.
I studied this issue during undergraduate degrees in business and in law and during my graduate studies at Oxford. I practised law as counsel to the Copyright Board of Canada and continue to consult on IP issues with private companies in high-tech, law firms, government agencies, and international organizations, including WIPO.
I've published more than two dozen peer-reviewed articles and authored or edited several books about aspects of IP and technology innovation, and I lead or collaborate on numerous large-scale research projects funded by SSHRC, the IDRC, the European Commission, and Genome Canada.
Based on my research, I'd like to raise three points: first, evidence-based policy-making; second, IP management practices; and third, assessment methods and metrics.
First, on evidence-based policy-making, almost everyone agrees that the right IP framework could help to spur innovation, productivity, and growth, but it is far too simplistic to state that strong IP protection promotes innovation without understanding how. And that's why the work of this committee is so valuable. There is a general consensus among experts that the precise role of IP in innovation systems is highly variable, context-specific, and complex. So we need to inform our ideology and economic theory with evidence of actual business practices and real-world impacts in specific sectors in order to create an effective policy. That's why I echo calls made recently in the Jenkins report and in the Canadian International Council's report, “Rights and Rents”, for a high-level, independent, evidence-based review of Canada's current IP framework, toward the formulation of a nuanced policy integrated into an innovation agenda.
The United Kingdom, as just one example, has recently done this. I cite the Gowers review and the Hargreaves report as examples. Canada would do very well to follow these leads.
The second point, about changing management practices, is dealt with in a policy brief that I recently co-wrote for Genome Canada, analyzing three overlapping IP strategies actually used in practice by science and technology innovators. The focus here is on the life sciences, but the lessons are more broadly applicable to other domains of science and technology as well.
An orthodox model was to acquire as many intellectual property rights as possible in order to maximize commercial opportunities or to stockpile an arsenal to use as strategic leverage against competitors. Now there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that this model is often unviable or that it works only in specific sectors and for specific kinds of organizations. In the public sector especially, most technology transfer offices that have adopted this model can't even cover their operating costs with the revenues they generate.
Where traditional management models are failing, one popular alternative is freely revealing ideas or inventions or even raw data into the public domain. This is not altruism; this is entrepreneurship. Many Canadian firms make money or fulfill mandates with this business model, and many more use the strategy to save on the cost and complexities of acquiring, let alone enforcing, an IP portfolio. A related tactic in the business sector is tapping into the trend of open innovation. This does not abandon opportunities for IP protection. To the contrary, it uses IP in innovative ways, licensing to require rather than to restrict collaboration.
The lesson here for policy-makers is not to presume that all organizations would or should want to manage their IP in the same way. We ought not to create a one-size-fits-all framework, and the practical experience here of Canadian innovators and entrepreneurs shows that research, training, and education—not necessarily treaties and legislation—will equip Canadian companies, especially SMEs, to better exploit IP.
I'll turn to assessment methods and metrics. Because intellectual property management strategies are changing so quickly, we need to adapt the methods and the metrics we use to assess our IP and our innovation policies. This is my third and final comment.
As things stand, as Dr. Corbin pointed out, IP outputs are a substantial part of the formula that many organizations currently use to evaluate Canadian innovation. Intellectual property outputs form one quarter of the weighting of our D grade in innovation. That's attributable to our poor statistical performance in acquiring certain kinds of IP rights.
Unfortunately, the formula wrongly presumes that IP outputs indicate innovation. Innovation and invention are not the same thing. A true innovation has market value. A patented invention may or may not.
Statistics suggest that nearly half of issued patents are invalidated when they're challenged in court. That creates work for lawyers and bureaucrats, but in fact impedes innovation.
Low-quality patents can contribute to the proliferation of thickets, create uncertainty, and lead to anti-competitive practices that stifle innovation. The narrow focus on quantity, not quality, also naively implies that to induce innovation we need only increase IP protection, which could in fact make matters worse.
I submit that we need a more sophisticated analysis like the OECD and WIPO are working toward, with a much fuller range of assessment methods and metrics, including qualitative data.
In conclusion, my comments suggest that the IP-related strategies for Canada's innovation system probably don't involve many legislative reforms or new international agreements for stronger protection or enforcement. What is needed first is a comprehensive, independent, evidence-based review of our entire framework in the context of innovation policy. Only then can we consider some possibilities for meaningful, practical solutions, like better intergovernmental policy coordination, more streamlined application and adjudication procedures, and enhanced cooperation between the public and the private sector.
Thank you.