IT is encouraging to know that more universities and research and development institutions (RDIs) have put in place intellectual-property (IP) policies to guide their communities.  A decade ago, only a few of them had policies.

Without clear guidelines on ownership of intellectual property (IP), which include royalties and other incentives to earn from their work, researchers and artists either keep their creations to themselves or go elsewhere to develop them into finished products, thus, depriving the country of the benefits from their creations and innovations.

To address this problem, IP Philippines partnered with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) in 2006 to advocate for IP policies. In April of 2008 the CHED and IP Philippines issued a joint circular directing all Higher Education Institutions to develop policy guidelines on IP. Seminars and policy drafting “clinics” were organized around the country to carry out this mission.

Then in March of 2010, through the relentless efforts of Sen. Eduardo Angara, the Department of Science and Technology, CHED, IP Philippines, state universities and RDIs, Congress passed Republic Act 10055, the Technology Transfer Act, that allowed publicly funded institutions to commercialize technological innovations within certain parameters.

However, crafting policies and implementing them are two different things. Coming across a contract for a research grant of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman revealed the chasm that divides the two.

Under the contract, to obtain a grant from the university, the researcher (grantee) must give up all his ownership rights to the intellectual property to the university (grantor). A provision states that the “…University shall own all right, title and interest, including patent rights, copyrights, trade-secret rights, trademark rights, Plant-Variety Protection rights, as well as intellectual-property rights of any sort throughout the world, which may be conceived, developed, made, produced or reduced to practice, in whole or in part, by virtue of this grant….” Not only does the researcher give up existing rights over his research paper, but also all other forms of IP that may arise from the paper in the future.

Second, the contract does not provide the researcher any share from the royalties or other revenues that may be obtained from his work, but leaves that option to the sole discretion of the grantor. The pertinent provision states, “The grantee understands that s/he, as well as other personnel involved in the project may be entitled to share in royalties and other revenues….” From the outset, the grantee is not given a fair share of future royalties or revenue from his work.

Third, the contract requires the researcher to assist “in every possible way” the university and any third party that the university has a contract with over the final product of the research, “in either the preparation or modification, or both, of patent applications or other intellectual-property applications and in any litigation which may result or which may become necessary to obtain, assert or defend the validity of any such patent or other intellectual-property right.”

Finally, the researcher has “the obligation” to assist the university “in perfecting, obtaining, maintaining, enforcing and defending the abovementioned intellectual-property rights in any and all countries shall continue throughout and beyond the termination of the grant.”

In sum, to obtain a research grant from UP Diliman, a faculty member must waive all his IP rights over his work, rely on the good graces of the grantor for any share in future royalties from it, assist in “every possible way” the university to perfect the rights over the IP that he no longer owns, and to enforce those rights for the university in any litigation in any part of the world for the rest of his life.

Of course, the grantee can choose to agree to all of these terms, but only a very generous grant could possibly induce any self-respecting individual to enter into such an onerous contract. The amount in the contract I came across is P60,000 for a year’s research.

Now, the chancellor of UP at Diliman, Dr. Caesar A. Salome, is an internationally recognized physicist and has a couple of US patents under his name. I wonder if he would sign such a contract if his name was above the term “Grantee,” rather than where it is now, above “Grantor.”

It took more or less six years of hard work by many people, sectors and institutions, including the Executive, Congress, state universities and RDIs, to put in place the policy and legal framework the country needs to boost technology development and commercialization. Disturbing as the UP research contract is, more worrisome is whether the country’s centers of research and learning understand the purpose behind the reforms that the state has put in place, upon their own urging and with their support, to implement them effectively.

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