Recommendation 8

We asked the Department and UKRI why it had not ensured that the taxpayer benefited from any intellectual property generated as a result of successful commercial development paid for by the Fund.19 The Department told us that securing intellectual property was not the purpose of the Fund—instead it was to accelerate R&D expenditure more generally. UKRI recognised that it was important to consider how to ensure a return on public investment, but added that it was not clear that retaining intellectual property rights was necessarily the best way to recoup the benefits of an investment. In its view, securing intellectual property was neither “...simple, cheap or low energy”. It told us that it was considering alternatives such as taking an equity stake in some investments.20 We sought assurances from UKRI and the Department that they would seriously think about how the public purse can benefit in the event of any “commercial successful roll out that has benefited from this bridge funding from the public purse.”21 The Department agreed to look at whether there might be specific exceptions to its current position.22 The Department subsequently wrote to us to explained that the Intellectual Property Office was working on “how to ensure that the Government receives a financial reward for its innovation and taxpayers are getting value for money going forward.”23 Meeting the R&D spending target