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Blakeney, Michael --- "Auditing Intellectual Property Rights by Public Research Institutes" [2007] ELECD 271; in Westkamp, Guido (ed), "Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Westkamp, Guido

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427757

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Auditing Intellectual Property Rights by Public Research Institutes

Author(s): Blakeney, Michael

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

2. Auditing intellectual property rights
by public research institutes
Michael Blakeney

1. INTRODUCTION
The career of Dr Herchel Smith may provide part of the explanation of why
universities and other public research institutes have become obliged to
involve themselves in the management and exploitation of intellectual prop-
erty (IP) rights. Dr Smith commenced his post-doctoral research into the
synthesis of steroids with Professor Lord Todd at the University of Cambridge.
In the 1950s, as was common at that time, this work was continued in the
private sector, when Dr Smith moved to the USA to work for Wyeth
Pharmaceuticals. As a consequence of that work, Wyeth was able to develop a
blockbuster contraceptive, Norgestrel, from which Wyeth received a consider-
able amount of revenue and Dr Smith earned many millions of pounds in
revenue. This Festschrift acknowledges the very considerable bequests by Dr
Smith both to Queen Mary, University of London and Oxford and Cambridge
Universities, as well as to a number of universities and research institutes in
the USA.
A lesson which the public research sector is belatedly learning is that, in
addition to relying upon the benefaction of philanthropists such as Dr Smith,
the sector is better advised to keep entrepreneurial researchers within its ranks
and to capture some of the value from their research. Indeed in the case of Dr
Smith, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals could be regarded as the beneficiary of the very
considerable value added by a number of English universities to Dr Smith's
capacity ...