Tokyo

Obuchi: fostering new industries. Credit: AP

A Japanese law that takes effect this autumn will promote technology transfer from universities and government laboratories to the commercial sector.

The technology-transfer bill, based on the influential Bayh–Dole legislation passed almost 20 years ago in the United States, is part of a policy initiative aimed at improving links between government, industry and academia. It underpins prime minister Keizo Obuchi's Millennium Project, which aims to foster new industries in areas such as biotechnology, information technology and environmental engineering.

Obuchi's project aims to make industry competitive by increasing collaboration with government-run research institutes. It will step up support for genome-related research, including a plan to decode a third of human gene sequences and to create a national centre for bioinformatics by 2001 (see Nature 400, 389; 1999).

Industry has welcomed the new framework. Until now, rights to patents produced from government-funded research have belonged to the national treasury, and could not be assigned to the private sector without complex legal procedures. The new measures will encourage universities to collaborate with industry to promote the application of government-funded science — allowing technology licensing organizations (TLOs), which advise on the commercial exploitation of university research, to obtain patent rights to inventions made at universities.

The technology-transfer law will grant awardee organizations first rights to a patent fully or partially funded by the government, allowing industrial research partners to retain title to inventions.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) says the licensing income of US universities alone totalled US$0.7 billion in 1998, while the combined licensing income of Japan's universities and national research institutes is only US$2.7 million.

“University research is potentially a large source of income, as well as new technology,” says Masahiro Hashimoto, head of industry–university collaboration at MITI. “But the main problem is the reluctance of university researchers to become involved in profit-making activities.”

Japan's civil service law forbids commercial activity by employees of national universities, and bans academics from holding external posts at private companies (see Nature 399, 624; 1999), though the government is planning to relax these restrictions.

“Japanese universities seem to be allergic to commercial activities: many still see involvement in such activities as a sign of frivolity,” says Takeshi Onoda of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations, the former director of Mitsubishi Chemicals.

The transfer of university research will bring immediate benefits to the commercial sector, but not necessarily to the universities themselves, says Onoda. “Successful application of the new technology-transfer law depends on whether individual researchers will be able to promote the commercialization of their inventions, and how mediating organizations such as TLOs succeed in assisting such endeavours.”

Although Obuchi's Millennium Project envisages the emergence of new industries over the next ten years, some observers predict that university technology transfer in Japan will take up to 15 years to develop.

“There is a need to develop a proper infrastructure for collaboration between industry, academia and the government, and we are 20 years behind the United States in this area,” says Onoda.