The methodology and process to fulfil these objectives has been the following.
In a first instance, the current standpoint has been characterized, both by analysing the existing literature and by a thorough analysis of patents data and indicators. Next, the ethical aspects of patents in ICT sector, and thus the current fulfilment of the responsible research and innovation was addressed.
The previous activities allowed to have a thorough characterization of the issues and challenges the ICT patent ecosystem is facing, and to what extent they have an impact in societal welfare, as well as to draft a list of potential measures that could solve or minimize those problems, and thus could increase societal welfare.
The following step in the project has been to check the opinion of a broad set of experts belonging to the whole ICT value chain and ecosystem, both on the severity of the problems and the prospects of the solutions. This task encompassed a set of interviews with key stakeholders followed by a subsequent survey to an even broader set of experts in the ICT ecosystem. From this valuable information, the consortium was able to elaborate a brief description of the set of challenges perceived more relevant by the different stakeholders, as well as an evaluation of the acceptance of the different proposals, and as a result, a set of recommendations captured in CIFRA project’s policy paper.
The final phase of the project has been dedicated to disseminating the results of CIFRA project analysis and recommendations. The most relevant activity was to organize a Stakeholders’ Conference on October 30th 2017 in Telefónica campus in Madrid. The event has been considered a great success of the project in different ways. Firstly, it gathered a set of top class speakers from different European countries, USA and China, working for key companies and organizations in terms of Intellectual Property management. Moreover, the event had a large, varied and very specialized attendance. But more important, the results of the project were very positively welcome by the attendees. Although the focus of the project is the ICT patent ecosystem, the consortium has leveraged the methodology used for ICT, to expand the analysis to other sectors (Health, Energy).
Additional dissemination has been pursued by means of publication in well-recognized journals. The most relevant result has been the publication of an adapted version of our policy paper in IAM blog. Other publication options that have been attepted have a longer revision cycle and will just succeed some time after the end of the project.
The feedback received during the dissemination phase has been used to produce a refined version of the CIFRA project’s policy paper.
