Report shows room for improvement

The South African National Survey of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Publicly Funded Research Institutions (2008-14), which was released together with the latest R&D Survey (2014-15) recently, is an initial baseline study to establish a number of indicators required to track overall activity in Intellectual Property (IP) management and Technology Transfer (TT).

The survey was sent to all “institutions” as defined in the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act. These are the 23 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the 10 Schedule 1 institutions or Science Councils (SCs). Valid responses were obtained from 24 institutions. Of these, 23 indicated that they have either established a dedicated office of technology transfer (OTT), have dedicated TT individuals or are members of a regional office.

One of the key findings of the survey is that management of technologies, patent families, trademark families, registered design families and new patent applications filed increased more rapidly than the increase in research expenditure, which indicates acceleration of these activities relative to research expenditure. On average, 100 new technologies were added annually between 2011 and 2014 to the portfolio managed by respondent institutions.

The survey shows there has been a quadrupling in the actual number of licences executed per year in the period. Of significance is that more than 88% of this revenue accrued consistently each year to the same four institutions that have well established TTFs.

The majority of IP transactions yielded less than R100,000 per year.

Some 45 start-up companies were formed over the period to commercialise the institutions’ technology, 73% of which were based on publicly funded IP.

The study reports that as at 2014: the majority (53.5%) of all staff in the OTTs had four years or less TT experience; females comprised 62.5% of the staff in HEIs and 61.9% in SCs; black, coloured and Indian/Asian groups together represented 56.4% of TTF staff in HEIs, and 65.2% in SCs. Viewed in the context of overall trends in the racial and skills composition of the labour force in the country, these statistics show that there is clear room for improvement.

Most institutions are performing activities within the categories of IP management, commercialisation and administration. According to the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer survey, enforcement is less active.

Institutions indicated that they required 19% and 50% additional funding in 2014 for TT operations and IP expenditure respectively.

The survey did not report on a number of indicators due to the paucity of data reported and, in some instances, the activities not being undertaken by one or more institutions. What is lacking from the report is detailed information on the IP portfolio and outputs of commercialisation activities.

While there are gaps in the information sources, availability of data and validation records at institutions, the intention is to regularise a biennial survey to monitor progress in IP and TT management at public institutions.