- As you know, Japanese universities are now very focused on intellectual property strategy and promoting greater transfer of patents. What do you think are the key lessons that Japan should take away from U.S.’s experience with stimulating greater research collaborations within the biomedical research community?

Dr. Rohrbaugh：
It’s important to understand industry’s needs and to be flexible in working with industry. At the same time, it’s also important to ensure that research can continue to be pursued in an unencumbered manner. While one can grant licenses, and sometimes exclusive licenses, when they are needed to ensure commercial access to intellectual property rights, it’s important to reserve rights to use that technology for research purposes. This is true not only for the institution that’s granting the license, but also for other nonprofit and for profit entities. While it may be an industrial practice to license something exclusively and agree not to compete in future research, that’s not a generally accepted principle in most academic laboratories. Our example shows that one can do both, one can license exclusively as necessary to companies for commercial development, while preserving the academic core of research -- providing licenses for research tools that can be used to further research both in industry and academic laboratories.

- With Research Tool Web, NIH has taken a very significant step towards increasing the amount of information available to Japanese and global research scientists. As biomedical research becomes more global and as Japan itself develops its strategies for how best to deal with this new global environment, what would you say from NIH’s experience and your own perspective would be some of the most important things for Japanese scientists and policymakers to consider as they develop their approach?

Dr. Rohrbaugh：
It’s important to consider this as a global enterprise, and that we all gain when we all share. Some people use the expression “it’s a tide that raises all boats.” We do want the tide to raise all boats when it comes in, and that happens when we share information and resources like research tools globally. And if some parties don’t share and others do, there’s the risk that those parties will walk away and the sharing will be reduced overall. Just as trade has become more and more global, so has technology transfer. Institutions that share their resources also become better known scientifically and more valued because of their tools, just as they do with their scientific publications. If those tools are not shared, there’s a risk that the reputation of the institution will not benefit as much from other people’s use of those tools, citing the source of those tools and valuing resources that those institutions have provided to the global scientific community.

- Thank you very much.

Dr. Rohrbaugh：
Thank you.

1　2　3