Impact of intellectual property rights from publicly financed research and development on research alliance governance mode decisions

Abstract

Recently, demands to generate more economic benefit from publicly financed Research and Development (R&D) in South African has resulted in the enactment of the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development (IPRPFRD) Acts. Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) for publicly financed R&D ensures that research organisations maximise the full national value of the Intellectual Property (IP) that they generate, but potential negative spill over effects on the perceived value of a research alliance might deter an existing alliance partner from continued collaboration, or a potential alliance partner from future collaboration. Hence, the perceived strength of such IPRs legislation can be viewed as a factor external to a research alliance and needs to be considered during the decision making process of strategically selecting an optimal research alliance governance model in order to maximise the perceived value of such a research alliance. This study, performed in 2010 within the context of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), consisted of two distinct research phases with the goal of developing a decision making model that would enable strategists at publicly financed R&D organisations to analyse and predict governance mode decisions, as well as select optimal governance mode structures for research alliances. Using a qualitative online survey amongst senior managers at the CSIR, followed by narrative enquiry and constant comparative method analysis, the first phase of the study aimed to qualitatively identify impact domains within the Acts, which could potentially influence research alliances with publicly financed R&D organisations. The first phase determined that the highest ranked impact domains included the choice of IPRs ownership, state walk-in rights on undeclared IP, and benefit-sharing policies for the creators of IP. The second phase was quantitative in nature and used Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to attempted to construct and verify a decision making model based on Value-Mediation Governance (VMG) theory. This phase revealed that stronger perceived IPRs regimes are positively related to the preference for quasi-hierarchy research alliance governance modes. Furthermore, it established that the expected value of a research alliance acted as a mediating factor on the relationship between the perceived IPRs regime strength and the preferred research alliance governance mode.