Post Tagged with: "productivity commission"

Innovation House by Michael Coghlan (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/aYb4b8

Why an Australian Study Could Provide Canada with an Innovation Roadmap

From the moment that the Liberal government renamed Industry Canada as Innovation, Science, and Economic Development it sent a clear signal that innovation is a top policy priority. Indeed, in recent months Minister Navdeep Bains has repeatedly called for bold policies focused on addressing Canada’s dismal innovation record.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that while the specifics of the Canadian innovation policy have yet to be revealed, a recent Australian government backed study provides a potential roadmap. The Australian Productivity Commission, which functions as an independent “think tank” for the government, released a 600 page draft report in April that proposes a myriad of changes to its intellectual property system.

The government asked the Commission to report back on whether the current legal frameworks “ensure that the intellectual property system provides appropriate incentives for innovation, investment and the production of creative works while ensuring it does not unreasonably impede further innovation, competition, investment and access to goods and services.” The result is a comprehensive report based on hundreds of submissions and consultations representing a broad range of views.

Australia Government Report Warns Against Including IP In Trade Agreements

The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission, which is the government’s independent research and advisory body on a range of economic, social and environmental issues affecting the welfare of Australians, has released a new report on the impact of bilateral and regional trade agreements. The report, which contains some key lessons for Canada given our current trade negotiations activities with Europe, India, and South American countries, warns against the inclusion of intellectual property within these trade agreements. The report concludes:

The Commission considers that Australia should not generally seek to include IP provisions in further BRTAs, and that any IP provisions that are proposed for a particular agreement should only be included after an economic assessment of the impacts, including on consumers, in Australia and partner countries. To safeguard against the prospect that acceptance of â€˜negative sum game’ proposals, the assessment would need to find that implementing the provisions would likely generate overall net benefits for members of the agreement.