Complex rules surrounding intellectual property and the difficulties of creating sustainable industry-academic partnerships are stifling innovation across the EU. In response to this problem, DigitalEurope today published MCARD-2020, a model consortium agreement available to anyone wishing to form a research and development consortium under the EU’s multi-billion euro, multi-annual research and development framework programme, Horizon 2020 (H2020).
MCARD-2020 was drafted by 12 legal experts from DigitalEurope’s corporate members to encourage the participation of partners from academia, small businesses and established companies in H2020 projects.
There has been a steady decline in industry participation in EU framework programmes (FPs), falling from 39% in FP4 (1994-1998) to 31% in FP6 (2002-2006), and in FP7 (2007-2013), industry participated in only 25% of the projects.
This decline is partly due to the prolonged economic crisis in Europe but complex rules governing intellectual property have also been inhibiting factors.
The European Commission has tried to make H2020 more attractive to companies by, for example, speeding up the evaluation process for projects. Under FP7 a standard proposal took around a year between submission and the start of the project. In a sector like ICT that is clearly too long. H2020 is striving to reduce this time-to-grant by a few months.
MCARD-2020 has been designed to stem the decline by allowing for greater flexibility in the way consortium members can agree on intellectual property issues, such as to sign up to cross-licensing agreements with other researchers, and how members of a consortium can use patents that may result from the research.
“This move from the lab to the market plays an important role in stimulating jobs and growth in Europe. Industry participation is vital. We hope the MCARD-2020 will encourage greater collaboration between companies and academia over the next seven years,” said John Higgins, Director General of DigitalEurope.
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