AusBiotech has called for a globally competitive and harmonised intellectual property system in its submission to the Productivity Commission’s Issues Paper on Australia’s Intellectual Property (IP) Arrangements.
Intellectual property is the fundamental source of protection for innovation. It is particularly important that local biotech and medtech innovation is not disadvantaged through a lack of harmonisation with other region’s IP systems. Ensuring that Australia has a globally competitive IP system is the key to our future health and wealth. Such a system will help:
- Increase the return on inventions and developments made possible by the significant level of public support for medical research in Australia;
- Provide greater incentive and certainty for the commercialisation of local, Australian health technology inventions and developments – supporting Australia’s rapidly developing biotechnology sector;
- Attract additional global investment in Australia’s research and development efforts; and
- Increase access to new medicines, medical devices and vaccines for Australian patients.
Given the importance of harmonisation, AusBiotech considers that extreme care must be taken before seeking to modify Australia's existing approach to IP protection. However, AusBiotech also calls for harmonisation on data exclusivity.
AusBiotech is strongly of the view that Australia's existing IP arrangements do not unduly limit the diffusion of knowledge. Indeed, the current system is supportive of such diffusion as the filing of patent applications serves to ensure diffusion of knowledge that might otherwise be retained as a trade secret or never utilised in the public domain.
The full submission can be found the AusBiotech website.