Academies’ Group Urges EU Harmonisation Of Rules On Inventorship, Patenting

A high-level group of academic experts in intellectual property rights and innovation in the European Union has released a statement highlighting the rise in inventions due to international research and development and says EU regulations on inventorship, assignment and patent filing should be assessed for harmonisation and reducing complexity.

The ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights issued a statement today entitled, “The Ownership and Protection of Multinational Inventions – in particular Inventions Resulting from Publicly Funded Research.” ALLEA stands for All European Academies.

“The increasing internationalisation of research and development has led to more inventions as the outcome of such cooperation,” it said in the 4-page statement. “The EU is supportive of these developments and has set up rules to administer this internationalisation. However, neither Regulation (EU) 1290/2013 nor any other legislative measure provides for harmonisation with national law on inventorship, assignment, and patent filing requirements for multinational inventions.”

The ALLEA Permanent Working Group Intellectual Property Rights warns that this legal complexity hampers efficiency in the research and development area and leads to legal uncertainty with respect to the choice of law(s) governing inventorship.

In their statement, the ALLEA experts observe the lack of harmonisation and invite the European Commission to (i) analyse the effect of diverging national rules on inventorship, assignment, and patent filing requirements on research and development in the EU, (ii) assess the appropriate scope and substance of legislative measures and remedies at EU level, and (iii) initiate discussions with regard to the prospect and feasibility of adopting harmonised legal instruments on the international level.

Members of the ALLEA Permanent Working Group Intellectual Property Rights are: Joseph Straus (Chair), Delegate of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities; Yuriy Kapitsa, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lead author); Are Stenvik (Co-author), Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences; William Cornish, British Academy; Carlo D’Adda (ex officio, ALLEA Board Member), Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy; P. Bernt Hugenholtz, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Paul O’Brien, Royal Society, United Kingdom; Alain Strowel, Université Catholique de Louvain, Saint-Louis University, Belgium; Ünal Tekinalp, Bilim Akademisi (Science Academy), Turkey; Tomasz Twardowski, Polish Academy of Sciences; Sylvester Vizi, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.