South Africa’s first national intellectual property and tech transfer survey

Research needs to become innovation that reaches the public

Innovation is crucial for South Africa’s economic growth and competitiveness. To enhance technological innovation, scientific research and development (R&D) is necessary. As the enabler of this endeavour, government playing the role of an “entrepreneurial state”, is required to invest significantly in R&D and in the institutional platforms that drive innovation.

To reap the full benefits of government R&D investment and grow the knowledge economy, South Africa must accelerate the transfer and commercialisation of results from publicly funded research in ways that benefit the country.

It is on this basis that, among other measures, the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act (IPR act) of 2008 was introduced to incentivise actors in the research-to-innovation value chain to improve their approaches in identifying and managing intellectual property (IP) for eventual commercial and social use, as well as their interface with the private sector and international partners in these aspects.

Effective policymaking requires evidence, and the inaugural South African National Survey of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Publicly Funded Research Institutions is one instrument to gather this evidence. The survey was embarked upon to establish what a number of the baseline indicators are that are required to track overall activity in IP management and technology transfer (TT).

Key findings

The survey was sent to all institutions — as the term is defined in the IPR act — which are the 23 higher education institutions and the 10 Schedule 1 institutions or science councils. Valid responses were obtained from 24 institutions. Of these, 23 indicated that they have either established a dedicated office of technology transfer, have individuals dedicated to TT or are members of a regional office.

Management of technologies, patent families, trademark families, registered design families and new patent applications 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.

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 technology transfer functions. The majority of IP transactions yielded less than R100 000 per year.

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

As at 2014 the majority (53.5%) of all staff in the offices of technology transfer had four years or less TT experience; females comprised 62.5% of the TT staff in higher education institutions and 61.9% in science councils; black, coloured and Indian/Asian groups together represented 56.4% of technology tranfer function’s staff in higher educational institutions, and 65.2% in science councils.

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 a range of activities within the categories of IP management, commercialisation and administration. Noticeably, enforcement is less active.

In the survey, institutions have indicated that they required 19% additional funding in 2014 for TT operations and 50% more for IP expenditure.