Chapter 8: Discussions
8.7 Accessibility of Information
8.7.2 Freedom to Access Information
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English is the most commonly utilized language to communicate around the world. It is reasonable for NIH to publish its licensing opportunity in English rather than other languages, like Spanish. NHRI, on the other hand publishes most of its opportunities in Chinese. Despite NHRI TTO has an English website, it has only very brief information about the office, which includes the Mission, Goals, Anticipations and Prospect and Contacts. Even the TTO noticed inaccurate information were listed on the website, no effort is made to amend it194. All these might lead to inefficiency in technology licensing as it poses high transaction cost to technology acquirer. However, since the potential licensees to NHRI are mostly Taiwanese enterprise, as the Taiwanese government has the policy to help Taiwanese industry, it is reasonable that NHRI used Chinese as their major communication language.
Yet, the decision of not using English as an alternative communication language cuts out the possibility of a foreign investment on the technology or possible licensing opportunities to foreign entity.
8.7.2 Freedom to Access Information
In the United States, The Freedom of Information Act allows anyone, including technology acquirer to get access to non-private, general information about technology licensing at NIH. Besides that, the FOIA requires all federal agencies, of which includes NIH to automatically disclose information to the public, allowing the general public to monitor the performance of the federal government. Furthermore, shall an information is not available through public access on the internet, one could submit a petition for information to the agency, and the agency were required to respond within a window of 20 days. With healthy and consistent monitoring, agencies have to align themselves well with standard because they will be overseeing by general public and will be criticized if they did not perform well. If any agency were found suspicious of delaying or illegally tampering information, it will be subjected to penalty and responsibility.
194 See Error! Reference source not found., response from TTO on Dec-9.
195 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (n.d.), National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer,
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NIH website itself is a very informative portal, with more than 100 links on its sitemap. It has dedicative an independent portal for TTO which has 50 links on its sitemap. Both webpages have dedicated an independent page for information about FOIA, which gives individuals instruction to request information under FOIA, to gain access to records in the possession of the government that is not in the public domain195. It could be observed that NIH is aware of their obligation of disclosing non-discreet governmental information pursuant to the nine exemptions of FOIA to the public voluntarily. NIH shows the voluntary to help providing information that is not in the public domain to the individual with any intention.
According to a few phone conversations by the author with NIH staffs, NIH staffs exhibit the willingness to provide requested information and friendliness to help.
In a few occasions, the NIH staffs helped the author to pass information to the person-in-charge of the requested issue. In a few email communications between the author with the Director of NIH Division of Technology Development & Transfer, email is usually replied within 1-2 working days.
However compared to NIH, NHRI TTO exhibits a different attitude towards information disclosure. The TTO of NHRI, like every Taiwanese government agencies, is not fond of actively disclosing information to general public, probably due to traditional value of low profile practice and humbleness. However, this positive value might not be good in view of public monitoring of NHRI licensing performance as not much information could be retrieved publicly on its website. NHRI in comparison with NIH, selectively disclose and disclose only very general and incomplete information on patenting and licensing. Besides that, NHRI is not constantly updating its website, resulting most of the information published online were out of date.
Despite NHRI is under regulation of The Freedom of Government Information Law, yet NHRI and its TTO did not actively notify its user that it is possible to retrieve information not in the public domain from the agency. It is possible that NHRI TTO is
195 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (n.d.), National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer, Retrieved from http://www.ott.nih.gov/freedom-information-act-foia
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not aware about the Freedom of Government Information Law. The author of this study sent a petition to request for information on Dec-6, 2013 and TTO expressed that the petition will only be considered after Jan-6, 2014; unaware of the maximum respond time under Taiwan Freedom of Government Information Law is limited to 30 days.
Furthermore, the law did not shift the burden of proof for information retrieval from the government to the individual requesting information, thus it would be very difficult for individual to freely access to information held by the government. During the process gathering information on the public domain, it is proven that it rather difficult and troublesome to get access to very general information from NHRI TTO.
The definition of “very general information” includes:
1. Information that were partially missing despite it was disclosed annually, e.g.
Royalties Received was disclosed in FY 2010 but not disclosed in other fiscal year.
2. Information that was disclosed by NIH TTO but not NHRI TTO, e.g. Royalty distribution, How budget was made, Licenses to SMEs, and etc.
3. Information that were supposedly disclose to the public, eg. Annual Royalty Revenues, Cumulated Patent Applied for the Year, Annual Funding Received and etc.
The word “troublesome” used on the previous paragraph was referring to the request from NHRI TTO to conduct a face-to-face interview, rather than the willingness to disclose it through public channel. Besides that, it was observed that the officers at NHRI TTO exhibited a hostility attitude towards information requester, being conspiracy about the intention of the information requester. Officers at the same time have the attitude of confusing, delaying and giving excuse on previously made promises. Agency personnel often questioned the motive of information petition and did not honor The Freedom of Government Information Law to actively disclose information to the public domain.
Perhaps the reason why NHRI is hesitant in providing information to general public was due to they did not aware that they are obliged to fulfill the Freedom of Government Information Law as they received funding directly from the Taiwanese
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Government (MOHW). Besides that, MOHW has the responsibility to notify NHRI of their obligation, and supervise NHRI on information transparency aspect.
8.8 Others: Locally Manufacture Clause
As discussed in the earlier chapter, there are two main parties in a licensing transaction: Supply Party and Demand Party. It is well known that Taiwan biomedical industry is relatively new and young in development. Government policies in incubating new companies are relatively immature if were to be compared with the U.S.
If the demand of domestic market on new technology is not high, then it is reasonable that activity of technology transfer will be weaker, compared to a market that has high demand on invention. As the world becomes flatter and flatter, boundaries became more and more undefined. If Taiwanese government does not act fast in allowing waiver to locally manufacture clause defined in Fundamental Science and Technology Act, more and more high quality inventions will remain in academic institutes and be kept until the patents are expired, thus wasting the investment of research and delaying the entrance of new technologies into the market. This restriction is limiting the flexibility of NHRI in dealing with foreign licensees, as NHRI has to oblige to the legislation requirement. NHRI could not be blamed for the lack of demand in licensing, while the Taiwanese government should be responsible for such outcome.
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Taiwan on NHRI 2009 Final Accounting Report and 2011 Budget197, the surveillance committee found that:1. NHRI controls insufficient information on technology transfer cases in recent years.
2. Royalty of some licensing cases were too low.
3. Donation from the government to NHRI has increased over the years, it is important that MOHW should enforce its evaluation on NHRI for a better performance.
4. The way NHRI compile its budget plan is too simple and simple, of which would influence the capability of Legislative Yuan to deliberate.
5. Lack of disclosure of expenditure items and amount on its’ Capital Expenditures Budget.
Following are some statement being excerpt from The Legislative Yuan of Taiwan’s “Budget Center Research Report” website198, under different keywords search related to NHRI199:
1. The MOHW supervision and implementation on performance of it’s NGO affiliates are inadequate.
2. NHRI should enforce its research and development plan to further reflect the need of industry in response to huge governmental funding, of which motive is to boost the industry growth.
3. The reputation of research outcome is not satisfying and the performance on commercialization is rather limiting. NHRI should strengthen the link between
196 Only highlights available online, detailed information about the Surveillance Report is only available to the member of Taiwan Legislator. This is another proof of low governmental information transparency: Even a surveillance report utilizing taxpayer’s money to investigate governmental agency, which is not related to defense purpose could not be release to the general public.
197財團法人國家衛生研究院 100 年度預算 98 年度決算評估報告（n.d.），立法院全球資訊網，Retrieved
from http://www.ly.gov.tw/06_lyacc/search/accOutlineList.action?id=15829
198預算中心研究成果，立法院全球資訊網，Retrieved from http://www.ly.gov.tw/06_lyacc/acc.jsp
199 Keywords include: 國家衛生研究院、國衛院
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research and industry needs to effectively elevate the competitiveness of Taiwan industry.
Although Legislative Yuan of Taiwan has addressed part of our observation few years back, however no changes were observed from NHRI TTO. This study would like to recommend the following changes to NHRI in order to achieve a better licensing performance. It is to be noticed that the following suggestions applies to any other technology transfer offices in Taiwan.
1. Frequently update and increase information disclosure on public domain
2. Promote the freedom to access governmental information. The freedom of information flow, especially in licensing field would create a smooth channel for licensing deal to move forward. Shall the information access at TTO is easy and effortless, potential licensee might be more encouraged to approach and discuss possible collaboration with TTO.
3. Modify licensing process to extend application window. Further clarify the difference between “notice of licensing opportunity” and “research results”.
4. Shift the localization licensing strategy to international licensing strategy. For example create proper English Technology Transfer Office website, or attend international scientific conference to open up licensing opportunity.
5. Increase transparency of IP Management Committee to include the selection process, committee members, responsibility and other information to allow institute members, technology acquirer and general public to monitor and supervise their performance. Inspect the criteria of which IP Management Committee utilized to approve the patent application and licensing approval.
6. Increase the flexibility on licensing scope and types of licensing contracts.
7. Evaluate the possibility of waiving the “Taiwan Manufacture” requirement, like what stated on 35 U.S.C. § 204200, to open up opportunity to license invention exclusively to foreign companies. The initiative of local manufacture is be good in a few years back, but it is no longer true now. Article 6 of Fundamental of Science
200 See Footnote 36.
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and Technology Act should be reviewed to catch up with the pace of country’s development.
This study believes that the above suggestions given could open more licensing opportunity to any technology transfer offices, thus increasing the utilization of publicly funded research organization’s invention. By increasing the possibility of licensing invention from bench side to industry, it could increase the government’s taxation income, increase working opportunity and boost economy improvement.
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