DOST holds technology transfer framework talks

The Department of Science and Technology yesterday held in Cebu, a Visayas-wide consultation on the proposed national policy framework on transfer of technologies generated from publicly funded research, which would be the basis for legislators to create a law improving technology in the country.

The activity, which was spearheaded by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources Research and Development of the DOST, was aimed at soliciting comments and suggestions from stakeholders in the public and private sectors on the proposed legislation.

Citing the recent Global Competitiveness Report, which ranked Philippines 79th in terms of adapting to new technology and 71st in terms of developing new technology among 125 countries in the world, Bernie Justimbaste of the DOST said the country has more to do to improve its technology to be at par with its southeast Asian neighbors.

"This is a challenge for all of us to address," he stressed, adding that the framework would become the basis for legislators to come up with a law that would address the problem on technology.

Justimbaste said the problems are the weak public-private research and development collaboration; the lack of harmonized, coordinated and integrated technology transfer system; the conflicting issues on technology ownership and information sharing; the lack of support to science and technology; and lack of resources for technology transfer.

Justimbaste emphasized that the country's poor rating in terms of technology is the result of the lack of interest of government to develop and improve technology. He explained that in its 2006 supplemental budget, the national government only allocated 0.14 percent of the Gross Domestic Product to research and development. The country's current GDP is pegged at P4.5 trillion.

Under the 2006 supplemental budget, only P700 million was appropriated for science and technology.

"Formerly research and development is spearheaded by the public. Now the private sector is spending more for it. The budget for research and development is declining and so is with science and technology," Justimbaste added.

Albert Aquino, director of the Socio-Economics Research Division of PCARRD, said in most cases, publicly funded and generated technologies do not meet the requirements of local industries.

To facilitate the transfer of technologies generated by government research and development institutions to the industry, the national policy framework proposes the adoption of certain measures provided for in the United States Bayh-Dole Act, subject to certain modifications.

The Act allows the transfer of exclusive control over many government funded inventions to universities and business operating with federal contracts for the purpose of further development and commercialization.

Like the Bayh-Dole Act, the Philippine's proposed national policy framework, the research and development institutions (RDI), which may either be public of private, is allowed to retain the title over intellectual properties generated from publicly funded research.

Inability of the RDI to commercialize the technology within a reasonable period of time will give the government the right to withdraw from it the right over the intellectual property.

Once translated into law, the proposed policy framework is also expected to address the limited number of generated and patented technologies and their adoptability by the local industries in the country. - Wenna A. Berondo