Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee.
Currently, at the University of Manitoba, our policy is that the intellectual property is jointly owned between the university and the inventor. We look at the intellectual property as two separate items: one is intellectual property that can be commercialized; the other is the works themselves, which are original literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic works or performances protected under the Copyright Act.
We separate them and we deal with them differently at the University of Manitoba. Works are owned by the creator, whereas the other intellectual property is owned jointly. We do the commercializing of the other intellectual property through the university's technology-transfer office, either through licensing or through spinning off the companies.
When we develop collaborative projects with industry, industry would like to have the ownership or assignment or exclusive licence to that IP. A lot of time is spent in negotiating. The approach we are taking is that if industry is involved in a project we would allow them to have the exclusive right or assignment of that IP. In a sense, they would have full control of the IP.
We are looking at industry being responsible for deciding whether to protect the IP and manage it through its life cycle. If students are involved, naturally we would want the students to be able to graduate, to defend their thesis. At the same time, we would be willing to delay the public exposure of their research for up to six months, and in exceptional cases for up to a year, so the student's career would not be affected. Researchers would be allowed to publish their collaborative work with the industry, but the industry would have the right to review the material, decide whether it is protectable, and to protect it. Industry partners would allow the university to continue to use the IP for non-commercial, internal research. Because works are owned by the researchers, our researchers would agree to allow industry access to literary works for their internal use.
In return, we are asking our industry partners, who would have full control of the IP, to assess the value of that IP. We are getting feedback from them on the percentage of the royalty we would receive in return for their having full control of the IP. We are having consultations. Our consultations with our research community have shown that this is a model they would like to work within. Many of the industries with which we have consulted also like the model we are proposing.
The advantage of this approach is that the university would continue to receive royalty income, which we would share 50-50 with our inventors. So the inventor is still being recognized for his contribution and the university is receiving some return on its contribution. Industry partners are already the existing receptor of that IP. So by having the right to receptor capacity, issues are solved. They are interested in that IP: they want it to be sold so they can grow their technology.
There would be a significant saving in the costs of negotiating, because the percentage would already have been agreed upon. There seems to be quite a good reception on the part of industry, as they want to work within this model. The negotiation time would also be reduced quite significantly and this should foster a lot more industry-university collaboration.
The advantage we see for our students, in particular, is they would be working then on the problems that have real application and very short timeframes. In that situation they would be exposed to both the basic research required to solve an applied problem and a current problem of the issue. Certainly, there would be some perception that the university is helping industry in this particular case. But we are helping all industry that wants to work with the university, so we are not saying we would only work with such-and-such industry. We are willing to work with any industry in that kind of open model, so it is quite a flexible model in that sense. The reason researchers would want to work in this kind of model is that it is going to benefit their research program and their research program will grow with time. Overall, we think this approach would help us grow our collaborations with the industry and then utilization of that IP for economic growth in provinces and in Canada.
Thank you.