Image: EmirMemedovski, via Getty Images
Cooperative Research Australia conference hears that university-bred ideas are the hardest to deal with
Intellectual property ownership and the failure of researchers, entrepreneurs and investors to agree on goals are hampering the commercialisation of Australian research, a national conference has heard.
At Cooperative Research Australia’s annual conference on 23 July, Mark Gustowski from the venture capital firm Mandalay said that IP issues could be stumbling blocks to investment.
“If we’re looking to invest in a company as a venture fund, the preference would always be that the company has the ownership of the IP,” he said, as this is part of how investors try to mitigate their risks. “If the IP is owned by the university, that is very, very challenging,” he said, adding that IP originating in industry initiatives is often easier to deal with.
While he would “love” to see standard agreements that simplify IP issues, he said: “I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.”
Pauline Fetaui of the tech innovation platform ACS Labs said that IP issues could be a “stranglehold” on commercialisation and that there could be a “scarcity mindset” around ownership of ideas. “What are the motives and what are we trying to protect here?” she asked.
At another conference session, Chris Downs, director of the University of Queensland’s Food and Beverage Accelerator, funded by the government’s Trailblazer Universities programme, said that Australia needs “a more mature and more open approach to handling IP”, compared with the current “very conservative, very restrictive approach”.
In his role with the trailblazer, Downs said that IP was being freed up. “Anything we invest in, all the IP belongs to the [new] company. We don’t take any equity.”
However, he said, “only 12 or 14 universities are involved in trailblazers. What are the opportunities for the others?”
Common goals
Building trust and relationships between research teams and those who would bring the ideas to market was also an issue for the speakers.
Fetaui said that researchers should be looking for their “first founding [management] team” very early, adding that the issue of links between researchers and entrepreneurs was such a concern that her company was planning an internal programme to tackle it this year.
When moving to commercialise research, company founders need to “look past the first cheque or investment”, she said. “You have to understand the end in mind…but you also have to understand everything you have to do to get there.”
Gustowski said that “great technologies still require amazing teams to take it to market, and there’s a shortage of commercialisation talent in Australia”.
Other speakers at the conference said that market needs should be considered earlier in research projects.
“Marketing is still seen as this extra cost instead of a massive investment,” said Natalie Chapman from the commercialisation agency Gemaker. “[Marketing] is crucial because marketing is about fulfilling a need.”
Fetaui said the Australian community should be helped to understand the potential of research to improve national issues. More people might invest “if we did a better job—including in my role—of exposing the problems that are being solved in research right now”.
Gustowski said he would like to see part of the money that goes to the academia-industry Cooperative Research Centre programme “carved off” to support early stage investment. Cooperative Research Australia represents the interests of the CRCs.
He said that research and innovation are among the first things “to fall off the government agenda when push comes to shove”.
Despite a reported increase in investment in climate change-related commercialisation, Australia is in “a bit of a capital drought right now”, he said.
But he added that existing schemes such as the R&D Tax Incentive are useful. “It balances Australia’s cost of research out to what it [would] cost for our northern neighbours,” he said.