The commercialization of scientific inventions by academic institutions was the subject of reform initiatives in recent years. Regulatory initiatives proposed to encourage public research institutions (sometimes even to impose a legal duty), to exploit the commercial potential of their inventions via intellectual property. Recent studies on the impact of the Bayh-Dole Act on scientific research in the United States could provide an indispensable scientific background for policymaking in this area in Israel.
This paper critically analyzes this literature, and explores its applicability to the Israeli context. The paper further explores recent initiatives to promote Open Science, inspired by the Free Software licensing strategy. Such initiatives demonstrate how intellectual property could be applied for facilitating access and securing creative freedom and open competition.
The paper concludes that technology transfer policies should be designed to accommodate emerging models of peer production and social networks, and should reflect the social responsibility of universities to make research output widely available The paper identifies the considerations which are relevant for defining technology transfer policy, and proposes some principal guidelines for policymakers in this area.
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