The difficulty of industry-university-research cooperation lies in the division of property rights and commercial implementation, and quality improvement still depends on market drive
2024-08-06
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
The Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Deepening Reform and Promoting Modernization with Chinese Characteristics (hereinafter referred to as the Decision) emphasizes "improving the system and mechanism for developing new productive forces in accordance with local conditions", which requires improving the efficiency of transformation of scientific and technological achievements. The 2024 Government Work Report also proposes "deepening the integration of industry, academia, research and application" and "formulating policies and measures to promote the transformation and application of scientific and technological achievements". It can be seen that "industry, academia and research" are highly expected.
However, a recent survey by researchers at The Paper Research Institute of five integrated circuit companies and high-tech food companies found that the current more mature industry-university-research cooperation mainly focuses on talent training, while technology-centric cooperation still faces challenges in intellectual property rights and commercial implementation.
Shared property rights are prone to disputes, and the property rights environment still needs to be improved
A listed integrated circuit company told a researcher at The Paper that "the biggest risk in industry-university-research cooperation is shared property rights." This risk often occurs when a company and a university jointly tackle a certain technology. Especially when the project is popular and urgent, both parties tend to ignore the specific provisions on patent ownership because they want to "get the project first."
In this context, the two parties tend to simply agree in the cooperation agreement that the intellectual property rights are shared, but the specific rights and obligations enjoyed by both parties are often unclear. According to the Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements, in the absence of other provisions, universities, as co-owners of industry-university-research intellectual property rights, can benefit from the property rights in any of the following ways (see Table 1).
However, when the business develops to a certain extent, the two parties may have an imbalance in commercial interests due to their different understandings of the specific exercise of intellectual property rights in production, sales, licensing, etc., thus causing disputes.
For example, companies reported to researchers at The Paper that some research institutes sold their intellectual property rights to competitors, or started their own businesses with patents, becoming competitors of the original cooperative enterprises. However, during the cooperation process, companies disclosed a lot of internal information to universities, causing them to suffer losses in commercial competition.
Another situation is that companies find that problems are prone to occur when using shared property rights as core technology to apply for listing and various honorary qualifications. "Many technology companies will be told during the listing review that the shared intellectual property rights simply agreed with universities are considered a risk." In addition, in the high-tech honor recognition methods in many places, it is required that when there are multiple owners of intellectual property rights, only one owner can use it when applying. If universities also want to use this property right for similar applications, conflicts are likely to arise.
If the enterprise then goes to the university to buy out the property rights, the negotiation will be difficult. From the university's perspective, the patent itself is the KPI, and the subsequent business conditions of the partner company are not important. "It doesn't matter if the company goes bankrupt, the worst that can happen is that the patent will be left unused."
But if a company's market value increases and it proposes to buy out the university's share of the property rights, the situation will become much more complicated. "Should we set the price at 10,000 yuan, 1 million yuan, or 100 million yuan?" If the price is too low, it will be a loss of state-owned assets, and if the price is too high, the company cannot afford it, and the negotiation will be very difficult.
Another complaint came from students. A student from a Zhejiang university told a researcher at The Paper that the research project he had made a core contribution to was taken by the laboratory to a company for commercial transformation, but he did not benefit from it. During the research and development process, no one informed him of the ownership of the property rights.
At present, corporate employees and university teachers can benefit from the transfer of results through wages, bonuses or dividends. However, there is no employment relationship between students and universities, so it is difficult for them to effectively assert their rights. At present, the benefits of students from the results of industry-university-research cooperation mainly depend on the school's own regulations.
The laboratory and factory environments are very different, and there is a lack of effective communication between schools and enterprises
During the production process, a high-tech food additive company accidentally discovered that a certain additive and protein would produce a better elastic taste. To this end, the company commissioned a university laboratory to explore the reaction mechanism of the additive and protein, hoping to obtain a stable elastic agent formula. However, due to various problems, "the things they made were finally left in the laboratory."
On the production side, the production conditions of the factory are very different from the laboratory environment of the school. The samples of the school are produced in a constant temperature and humidity laboratory, and all uncertainties are eliminated in the process. But in the factory, "a pot is as large as 60*30*30 cubic meters, and it is impossible to accurately control various environmental factors." In addition, the formula given by the laboratory also uses special equipment and auxiliary materials. These materials have been popularized in laboratories, but enterprises cannot easily and stably obtain them from the market.
"But we need a product that can be effective under any circumstances, otherwise there will be customer complaints and returns." However, the formula given by the laboratory can only guarantee that the product will be effective under certain special conditions, which is quite different from the actual situation.
In the above-mentioned industry-university-research cooperation, the depth of the research results is not enough to guide enterprises in developing products. The main achievement of the university team is that they used spectroscopic instruments to "see" that the additives and fish meat produced a certain network structure, thereby improving the elasticity of the meat. But what the company actually wants to know is the cause and law of the generation of this network structure, so that it can be applied to actual product development. In the eyes of universities, the funds and time provided by the company are only enough to explore a relatively simple mechanism relationship. As for how to further apply the research findings to the production environment, "that is the company's business."
Finally, in the process of communication between schools and enterprises, it is easy to be "disappointed" because of the differences in goals and expectations of both parties. University teachers often participate in industry-university-research cooperation to obtain funds and publish articles, while the ultimate goal of enterprises is to sell new products. There are always a few steps between the two, but it seems that no one can or wants to take these steps.
It is very easy to have unpleasant experiences during the delivery of results. Companies often have a strong "Party A mentality", thinking that they have paid money and the other party should help them solve the problem. University researchers often think that companies do not respect the laws of scientific discovery and are eager for quick results.
Industry-university-research cooperation should not be policy-driven but market-driven
Despite this, many companies are still increasing their investment in industry-university-research cooperation. In addition to the purpose of talent training mentioned at the beginning of the article, there may be other purposes.
Many local governments have established corresponding honorary qualifications and financial rewards to encourage industry-university-research activities. For example, the recently announced "Implementation Measures for Strengthening Industry-University-Research Cooperation and Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements in Jiading District, Shanghai" emphasizes that industry-university-research cooperation rated A will receive a 50% subsidy, and the corresponding technical person in charge can be identified as a leading talent or elite talent.
These incentive policies have become incentives themselves, which may lead companies to conduct industry-university-research activities in order to obtain subsidies and honors, rather than to improve their market competitiveness. For example, the policy also emphasizes various severe measures to punish "maliciously defrauding fiscal funds", which shows that this is not uncommon.
Policy-driven industry-university-research cooperation often stops at the completion of projects, and ultimately fails to improve the conversion rate of China's scientific and technological achievements. Relevant studies have shown that China's scientific research achievement conversion rate is around 30%, of which the rate of invention patent implementation by universities is 16.9%, and the industrialization rate is only 3.9%.
Jiang Xiaojuan, a professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told The Paper earlier that in the digital age, the center of innovation has shifted from universities to enterprises, and "enterprises, as producers, aggregators and aggregate miners of massive data, have greatly enhanced their position in the innovation chain."
The "Decision" mentions the need to "strengthen the deep integration of industry, academia and research led by enterprises" and "support enterprises to take the initiative to lead or participate in national scientific and technological research tasks", etc., in order to allow market entities and market logic to lead the cooperation between industry, academia and research.
The future trend of in-depth integration of industry, academia and research should be to promote market-driven development and make cooperation more "grounded".
-------
Cities are born out of agglomeration.
A city’s public policies, living environment, and customs and practices shape the foundation of citizens’ lives.
The Paper, focusing on public policies, responding to public concerns, and exploring urban issues.
Xie Qiuyi, researcher at The Paper
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
