A group of experts advises researchers on intellectual property and transfer

José Pichel Andrés/DICYT The group 'Euripides: Intellectual Property, innovation and socio-economic development' researches the legal issues related to research results, their property and their transfer. This recognized research group (GIR) of the Law School of the University of Salamanca is currently developing two projects on these issues and is available to researchers who need advice.

Fernando Carbajo Cascón, vice dean of the Law School and main researcher of EURIPIDES group, ensures that there is widespread ignorance of the scientific community on intellectual and industrial property, patents and industrial designs. For example, "the vast majority of professors do not know who the results of a research belong to," said to DiCYT.

Therefore, "we offer our services to divulge problems and opportunities that the law offers to science, including research in humanities and in legal and social sciences," he says.

The list of questions and conflicts is wide: how to include the name of research centers in scientific publications, who owns the economic rights of an invention, what differences there are between protecting the partial results of a research and the final result of a scientific work or invention, how to perform transfer agreements with companies, in which situations one should publish the results on line or use of others' content are only some of the problems.

The Law of Sustainable Economy or the Law of Science, both from 2011, provide the legal framework to address these issues, but they generally do not set high standards, so that in some cases universities should develop their own regulations that are sometimes too brief or anachronistic.

Who owns the results?

For example, the question of whether the results of a survey belong to the author of the work, the university, both or others may be complex and different in each case. The situation is different if the results come from direct duty or a routine work of the researcher, for example. What is evident is that the scientist should communicate his successes to the institution where he works and that, in many cases, does not occur.

In order to research and try to clarify this type of disputes, EURIPIDES group is immersed in two research projects, one national and one autonomous, and often refers to comparative law, analyzing the case-law of countries such as Germany or France, whose research activity is stronger and, consequently, there were situations in Spain which had not occurred yet. The Court of Justice of the European Union seems to be a great reference, but not all controversies come to this instance.

Either way, "the idea is not to remain in a theoretical study but put ourselves at the disposal of the university community so they may bring us their questions," says Mercedes Curto, member of the group. "We want to create a dialogue with stakeholders, so they bring in their problems and we detect which the main demands are, what may allow us to carry on our theoretical research and offer practical solutions," she adds.

Patenting DNA

A concrete example in which the group has worked is patenting the DNA sequences. Although there is a European legal framework, a judgment of the US Supreme Court has refused the patents that a company would have on isolated genes from clinical samples related to breast and ovarian cancer and has declared that only the sequences produced artificially in the laboratory could be patented. So the debate is open, even if the experts do not believe that there is much practical impact in Europe.

Many aspects of science may present similar issues, for example, obtaining new plant varieties. Moreover, professors and researchers are faced, on a daily basis, with simpler dilemmas, but also important and related to intellectual property, such as the use of foreign content in the virtual world or the possibility of having a doctoral thesis available online, which can harm the author if he wants to have his work published.

The intellectual property office model

Following the model of the Anglo-Saxon universities, these issues could be resolved with the creation of an intellectual property office which, sometimes, is divided into two entities, one in charge of copyright and other patents, which advise and assume “a source of creation of innovation and wealth for the university”. Its functions would be different and complementary to current research results transfer offices (OTRI) of the Spanish system, but because of the impossibility that in the current context universities could introduce such modifications in their organization chart, the members of the group EURIPIDES offer to Castile and León universities training work, publicizing and advice.

Nowadays, the issue that they are working is the training, as they have organized workshops with topics such as chemical-pharmaceutical patents or Google before the law and have been preparing a national conference on intellectual property for the next academic year, as well as more specific courses on legal issues related to the use of digital tools and files. In the near future, they expect to have a place on the Internet to facilitate the dissemination of such knowledge and the communication with researchers.

	Contact
	euripides@usal.es