Breakdown of Patents Developed by Government Research Institutes and Autonomous Universities

13 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) (a) what is the breakdown of the number of patents developed by Government research centres/institutes and Autonomous Universities in the past 10 years which have been commercialised by the private sector by way of (i) licensing via A*STAR's Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL); (ii) licensing without going through ETPL; (iii) mechanisms other than licensing via ETPL; and (iv) mechanisms other than licensing without going through ETPL; and (b) for each group, what is the breakdown by Government-linked companies, public-listed companies, MNCs and local SMEs.

The Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) (Mr S Iswaran): Mdm Speaker, from 2004 to 2014, a total of 1,759 patents were awarded to Singapore's public sector research performers in A*STAR and our Institutions of Higher Education.

A*STAR and MOE track the total number of licensing agreements executed by Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL) and the Autonomous Universities (AUs) including those that involve Intellectual Property (IP) that is not patented.

The total number of licensing agreements signed by ETPL with private sector companies between FY2004 and FY2014 was 920. Of these, about 80% were with SMEs and start-ups.

The number of licensing agreements signed by the Technology Transfer Offices in our AUs from FY2008 to FY2014 was 418. MOE does not have a breakdown of the number of licensing agreements by corporate segments but plans to start collecting this data from FY2016.

Companies collaborate with our public sector research institutions on R&D in different ways. However, licensing is the primary mode adopted by ETPL and the AUs for the commercialisation of IP. A formal licensing agreement between research performers and companies ensures that both parties entering into such a commercial arrangement fully understand their rights and obligations.

Mr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply. I just have two supplementary questions. Firstly, would the Minister consider creating a more active match-making function or facility among the Government agencies involved, such as SPRING, A*STAR, IDA, and so on, in order to make our small and medium enterprises (SMEs) more aware of the available IP that they can license or commercialise in a more proactive way?

My second supplementary question is: would the Ministry consider creating a facility whereby SMEs may be able to approach the research centres, institutes and universities in some collective way to request if a certain kind of IP can be developed for their commercial purpose; and if there is a research institute or research team that is willing to take that up, to then execute the research and allow the SME to commercialise that IP when it is developed, with some cost and profit-sharing from the Government.

The reason I ask this is because there is a database of IP, there are events to promote this, there is a scheme to attach researchers to SMEs, but I think this sort of match-making and system whereby we can request the institutes to develop IP may be a way to be more proactive to enable our SMEs to really leverage the expertise in our community of researchers in a similar way to, for example, the Fraunhofer model in Germany.

Mr S Iswaran: Mdm Speaker, I thank the Member for his supplementary questions. I think, in essence, the question is whether we can have more intermediation between the research performers in the public sector on one hand and the potential users of research on the other.

As I have said in my reply earlier, there are different ways to achieve this. Licensing is but one mechanism. In fact, with many companies, we have joint laboratories which do proto-typing and test-bedding in order to develop new products. We also have research collaboration agreements which may entail a group of research institutes collaborating with one or a group of companies on specific projects.

Also, we do have other efforts in order, to facilitate greater engagement between our companies and our research institutes. For example, A*STAR does an annual SME Day, where SMEs from very diverse sectors are invited to participate, not just those which are already in collaboration but many others, so that they understand the suite of capabilities that are available for them.

As the Member has alluded to, and I will just elaborate for the benefit of all Members, A*STAR does engage our SMEs in a very deliberate fashion.

One mechanism is the Growing Enterprises through Technology Upgrade (GET-Up) programme which essentially allows for the secondment of researchers to these SMEs, whether it is to work on specific ideas or to map out a larger technology blueprint for them. And similarly, we have got Technology Adoption Programme (TAP) where they modularise technology like radio-frequency identification (RFID) and others so that SMEs which are not really capable or keen at this stage to engage in a very deep research, but want simple modular technology that they can plug in to, or that can be plugged into their systems. Those are some of the products that A*STAR has also developed and RFID is one example.

In general, I would say that that has been the mechanism of engagement and we are always open to other ideas on how it can be improved. But I would say that we need effort on both sides: both on the part of the research institutes to reach out and also for the end-users or those who have the need, to also make the effort to find out more and participate actively.

I would say that the trade associations and chambers, particularly those that are focused along sectoral lines like the precision engineering groups and so on, I think they have very good mechanisms through which some of the more broad needs of an industry cluster can be raised by SMEs.

2.49 pm

Mdm Speaker: Order. End of Question Time.