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EPIPAGRI is aimed at proving the feasibility and benefit brought by joint management of intellectual property (IP) of European public research organizations (PROs) involved in agricultural sciences. The project has the ambition to bring solutions to overcome the situation of "patent thicket" where overlapping patents along with exclusive licensing practices hinder commercialisation of innovations, increase risks of inadvertent infringing, and inflate arrangement costs.
EPIPAGRI's activities includes the development of an IP information exchange system, establishment of patent clusters according to products, and dissemination of the project results to stakeholders, including relevant external PROs, industry, networks, and policy-makers. EPIPAGRI will result in an information system composed of a database over agricultural biotechnologies patents and know-how, including histories and statuses, and a software package designed to help technology transfer experts in collecting, extracting, and analysing IP information.
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The second outcome from EPIPAGRI consists of patent pools ready to be proposed to internal and external PROs for joint management and industrial partners for technology transfer and commercialisation EPIPAGRI will also bring proposals of intellectual policy measures to national and European policy-makers aiming at preserving the rights for academic research to utilize public research results and facilitating access of industry, in particular SMEs, and developing countries to biotechnological innovations.
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EPIPAGRI will help public research better exploit and transfer their findings to industry. EPIPAGRI is expected to encourage industrialists, especially SMEs, more fully exploit European agricultural public intellectual properties EPIPAGRI will also make agricultural biotechnology inventions more accessible to emerging countries thus, contribute to enhancement of public welfare at the large extent.
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For more information about this project, please visit the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/food_quality/projects/106_en.ht…; target="_blank">European Commission Food Quality and Safety in Europe</a> Web site.