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Public- Private Partnerships: Sustainability Through Better Intellectual Asset Management
6 November 2008
Prepared for The Innovation Partnership By Matthew Herder, TIP Expert (See below for link to full paper)
Public-private partnerships have achieved a great deal of visibility in recent years. In the domain of health-related scientific research, the number of such partnerships has grown from a handful to the hundreds in response to the declining ability of more traditional models of R&D to generate new medicines generally and interventions for the world's poor in particular. Despite this newfound prominence, the sustainability of health-related public-private partnerships, as a model of scientific research and development, is in serious jeopardy. They face criticism from health activists due to the perception - perhaps legitimate in some cases - that they are beholden to corporate interests or overly dependent on the good will of a single sponsor. For their own part, most biotech and pharmaceutical corporations appear hesitant to enter public-private partnerships unless the initiative enhances corporate goodwill, is defined as "pre-competitive," provides access to scarce resources, and/or the underlying contractual agreements can be gamed to their advantage. And while governments around the world frequently recite the merits of the public-private partnership model, very few countries have offered a consistent source of funding to support them. Philanthropic sources of funding have instead stepped in. Should donor fatigue occur, many public-private partnerships would be forced to cease operations.
To help ensure that public-private partnerships balance the interests of their various stakeholders and become more sustainable, improved intellectual asset management is necessary. Such improvement will not, of itself, resolve problems of access and innovation. Other factors, including legal rules, availability of finance, product regulation and the capacity of health systems, are in play and arguably should be subject to reform. However, improving intellectual asset management can have a significant impact because of the various transaction costs that poor decision-making will inevitably carry. This briefing note aims to demonstrate the value of sound intellectual asset management by a) canvassing different intellectual asset management strategies and tools that can be adapted to suit a public-private partnership's particular objectives and constraints; and, b) illustrating how informed decisions around the use or avoidance of intellectual property can significantly impact public-private partnership outcomes.
To read the full paper prepared by TIP expert Matthew Herder click here.