Survey of CRIs shows support for IP rewards

Public sector scientists are broadly in favour of the concept of intellectual property rewards being shared with staff but harbour concerns about how it would work, according to the results of a PSA survey, PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff said today.

“In light of the Government signalling recently that it would like to see more public-funded research exploited for its commercial potential, the PSA commissioned UMR Research to conduct a survey of CRI staff for their views. The majority of respondents, of whom three-quarters are our members, would like to see some benefits from the commercial returns on their research.”

“There is a precedent for the concept as some universities already share the gains from their research with the staff involved.”

Richard Wagstaff said there was, however, significant concern amongst the survey respondents as to how the process could be managed with fairness and without creating conflict. There was also scepticism about how much sharing intellectual property benefits would stimulate more commercially focused work, and concern that this would distract researchers from non-commercial but valuable public-good science.

“If reward from the commercialisation of IP is to be advanced, alternative reward systems will need to be considered for areas of public good research which are still of value to the country.”

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