Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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678. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the name of the body tasked with the oversight of the national intellectual property protocol; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16554/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI), established by Enterprise Ireland in partnership with the Irish Universities Association, is the custodian of the national IP Protocol on behalf of my Department.

The Protocol is implemented in partnership with research funding Departments and agencies and other stakeholders. The Protocol describes the ways in which enterprise can expect to work with the State-funded research base. It applies to Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) and to enterprise.

All knowledge producing organisations, public and private, have the potential to generate intellectual property. A major focus of this Government is to ensure an increase in research activity and associated investment in research, based on the widely held understanding, across developed economies, that commitment to research and development generates economic and social returns.

KTI was established by Enterprise Ireland in partnership with the Irish Universities Association (IUA) in late 2013. It was created as the result of the recommendation from a Government-led task force that reviewed the state of "business to research base" engagement in 2012 and is embedded in the Government Report ‘Putting Public Research to work for Ireland’.

KTI’s role is to make it simple for enterprise to engage with the State funded research base in Ireland through increasing visibility of opportunity and offering consistent approaches to transactions. Clarity in respect of IP policy assists both public bodies and companies to do business more efficiently and successfully.

As part of its role, and in consultation with my Department, KTI reviewed and updated the National IP Protocol in 2016 (first published in 2012) setting out the policy and the framework for engagement between industry and the research base. To do this, an extensive review and consultation on the Protocol in practice commenced in 2014. A revised IP Protocol was presented for Government approval in late 2015 and published in January 2016.

Ireland’s national strategy is based on developing excellent science in our universities, IOTs and other research performing organisations and ensuring that science forms the foundations of a vibrant knowledge transfer ecosystem which involves quality teaching and learning drawing from the frontiers of knowledge and also effective collaborations between academia and enterprise.