The aff turns IP into social good
McCann 20, researcher at the New Economics Foundation interested in systemic and radical reform of the economy and the creation of a twenty-first century commons. He is co- author (with Stewart Lansley and Steve Schifferes) of Remodelling Capitalism: How social wealth funds can transform Britain. He is also part of the movements to reform money, author of Scotpound: A digital currency for the common good and co- author of the book People Powered Money; to reform land, writing about Common Ground Trusts and a founder of the Land Justice Network; and the digital economy, with recent publications including Blocking the Data Stalkers and Digital Self Control. (Duncan, “Commoning Intellectual Property: Public funding and the creation of a knowledge commons,” Common Wealth, https://assets-global.website-files.com/62306a0b42f386df612fe5b9/637dfe77345b29128b30d9e0_Commoning%20Intellectual%20Property.pdf)//BB
This report has exposed the nature of the role of the public sector in making investments, which now go far beyond market fixing, to take a more active role as an ‘entrepreneurial state’ setting the direction of innovation. Yet despite the state’s evolving role and the fact that the public now shoulder considerable investment risk, we never share directly in the upside of its investments. The UK now invests over £14.4bn every year in directly funding and facilitating R&D through tax credits. This is a substantial amount and comparable to the £25bn the private sector spends each year on R&D. We desperately need a new model both to ensure that we get a more direct return on that investment as well as use the IP that is generated to pursue specific social and non-monetary goals. The current market failure theory, which emphasises the state’s return through indirect means such as economic growth and job creation, is no longer sufficient. However, when looking at existing model there are issues with both too closed and too open IP regimes. We therefore need to create a new system where we navigate between these two extremes. Our proposal for the creation of a Public IP commons will radically change the domestic R&D sector and enable a large quantity of IP to be accessed by more companies and individuals. As we have outlined in this paper, we must ensure that there are proper rules and mechanism to govern and manage access to this new IP commons if it is to be successful. Our proposal meets the four goals to recognise the state as owner of the IP that it funds, to maximise the potential for innovation by licensing as widely as possible, allows the IPCMB to license to purpose-driven and social organisation at no/low cost and recognises the huge non-monetary value of IP. We need to urgently need to change from the status quo. We hope that this paper will be part of the important discussion that needs to take place about how best to recognise the new role of the state and how to ensure that the IP that we the public fund delivers most benefit to us.