This report — summarising a UNESCO innovation for development workshop — examines the role of innovation in development, and the contribution of knowledge, research and development to innovation. It focuses on knowledge in science, engineering and technology.

The report outlines analytical and theoretical frameworks as well as current innovation efforts and innovation policy. Major issues discussed at the workshop are highlighted in an action agenda, which suggests the need for more research and statistical indicators, dissemination of projects, human and institutional capacity building, better policy design and the need to increase awareness of innovation.

A separate report, which is included in the document, consolidates several themes that emerged from the talks, including the need to improve policy coherence, the difficulties of comparing innovation across countries or different points in time, the importance of capacity building, and the role of technology transfer in generating new knowledge. It also identifies challenges facing policymakers, the research community and international donors in achieving these goals. The report includes keynote speeches and links to Powerpoint presentations given at the conference.

This report reviews the achievements made by the 'Promotion of Grassroots Innovation in Asia-Pacific Countries' project, which aims to build capacity for member countries to source, document and disseminate grassroots innovation and traditional knowledge as a means of economic and social development.

The first section documents the theory and practice of grassroots innovation using case-studies of existing organisations, such as the Honey Bee Network. It illustrates the diversity of approaches used to engage with this type of innovation, as well as the ethical aspects of informed consent before obtaining knowledge from local populations. The second part describes advances made during national and regional workshops on the subjects of capacity-building, promoting grassroots innovation and creating partnerships.

This report provides an analysis of global innovation and intellectual property (IP) trends in 2011, and examines how innovation has changed. It also reviews how IP protection affects innovative behaviour, and what that implies for policymaking.  

In four chapters, the report reviews trends in innovation and IP; the economics of IP; balancing collaboration and competition; and the role of IP in harnessing research for innovation. Each chapter concludes with recommendations for future research. The report examines questions that include the notion that innovation processes are increasingly open, international and collaborative; the drivers of increased demand for IP rights; and the rising importance of technology or knowledge markets.

It concludes by suggesting ways that IP and innovation policies can be redesigned to adapt to the growing demand for IP protection. It states that IP is playing an increasingly important role in innovation policies, and that moving beyond polarised debates will require fact-based research as well as translating economic research into accessible messages.

This paper, published by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, reviews proposals on using intellectual property to improve access to climate change technologies and the extent to which these may help developing countries.

The author, US lawyer Cynthia Cannady, criticises the practicality of implementing compulsory licenses, patent pools or databases, and voluntary licensing for developing countries.

Instead, she suggests a two-pronged strategy that supports research in developing countries and promotes mutually beneficial technological collaboration between developed and developing countries.

Cannady recommends implementing this strategy by managing developing countries' intellectual capital, supporting local climate change research and development, improving education and awareness, commercialising climate change technology and engaging in periodic assessment.

This report, published by Centre d'Économie Industrielle (CERNA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), examines the distribution of climate mitigation inventions since 1973 and their international transfer.

Based on an analysis of patent data, the authors find that innovations are mostly made — and exchanged between — developed countries, although China and South Korea are found among the top ten inventors. Only 18 per cent of climate mitigation technology exports come from emerging economies, but this proportion is growing rapidly and offers huge potential for North–South and South–South exchanges.

Technologies considered in the report include wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy, energy conservation in buildings, motor vehicle fuel injection, and carbon capture and storage.

The authors use graphs and tables to present their results. Their findings suggest that the Kyoto protocol has induced innovation but has had no effect on technology transfer.

This report, published by E3G and Chatham House proposes an institutional framework for the innovation and transfer of low carbon and adaptation technologies, and suggests key features for the international agreement due to be signed at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The authors include an executive summary and an analysis of key issues including technology options, capacity in developing countries and intellectual property rights (IPR).

They also make recommendations for action, calling for objectives to be set in terms of critical technologies that need developing. Other suggestions include creating a multilateral innovation and diffusion fund, using sectoral approaches to accelerate technology development and deployment, and establishing a 'protect and share' agreement for IPR.

This report was produced by the Policy Department of Oxfam (Great Britain) as part of its ‘Cut the Cost of Medicines’ Campaign. Oxfam argues that governments must amend global patent rules to ensure that impoverished people have access to the medicines at prices they can afford.

The report gives an overview of the WTO patent rules and Oxfam’s concerns; describes the health crisis in developing countries; examines the effect of patents both on the price of medicines and on pharmaceutical research and development; explores the issue of biopiracy; looks at what action governments and private companies might take; and considers the politics of patent rules.

The report’s recommendations focus on TRIPS reform and on the need for rich countries and trans-national companies to "stop harassing developing countries on patent issues". They also cover the need for public funding for research into new medicines, and the role that industry could play in making medicines affordable.

(Various briefing notes, position statements and research papers are also available from this website.)

This report argues that agricultural research and development is at a crossroads — one path leads to the privatisation of agriculture and the other towards farmer-led agriculture.

It claims that intellectual property rights (IPR) are incompatible with sustainable agriculture, and warns that sui generis systems designed to boost domestic public research cannot simultaneously attract foreign private sector investment.

The report urges Asian governments to address the inherent threats of IPR over genetic resources, to take a look at other options that would better serve the interests of their people, and to start implementing a truly pro-people agricultural research and development agenda.

This is an in-depth report that intends to assist developing countries in their efforts to adapt their laws to the standards set by TRIPS in relation to pharmaceutical products and processes.

The author presents options for the design and implementation of public-health-sensitive patent policies in developing countries. It examines approaches to selected issues in patent law that may help to strike a balance between the public and private interests involved in the protection of health-related inventions, including those of States, patients, and of the suppliers of health-related goods and services.

The report was prepared as part of an initiative that explored health-related aspects of intellectual property rights and how to further the needs of the poor and excluded in developing countries. It is primarily addressed to policy makers and others involved in public health in developing countries.

"Fatal imbalance" is the product of MSF’s 'Drugs for Neglected Diseases' Working Group — a collaboration between scientists, health professionals, drug development experts, international organisations and non-governmental organisations.

It concludes that virtually no new drugs are being developed for diseases that predominantly affect the poor, such as sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis. For example, of the 1393 new drugs approved between 1975 and 1999, just 13 (one per cent) were for tropical diseases.

The report explains that responsibility for correcting the 'fatal imbalance' lies with governments, who must become directly and proactively involved in searching for solutions at a global level. The report also recommends that capacity building and technology transfer projects to increase research and development expertise in developing countries be actively pursued.

The Commission on Intellectual Property Rights is an independent international body that was set up by the British government in 2001 to examine how intellectual property (IP) rights could work better for developing countries. The Commission’s fundamental task was to consider whether the rules and institutions of IP protection as they have evolved to date can contribute to development and the reduction of poverty in developing countries. As the title of their report implies, the Commission concludes that development objectives need to be integrated into policy-making on intellectual property rights, both nationally and internationally, and the report sets out ways in which this could be put into practice.

The Commission's work has considered:

• how national IPR regimes could best be designed to benefit developing countries within the context of international agreements, including TRIPS;
• how the international framework of rules and agreements might be improved and developed — for instance in the area of traditional knowledge — and the relationship between IPR rules and regimes covering access to genetic resources;
• the broader policy framework needed to complement intellectual property regimes including for instance controlling anti-competitive practices through competition policy and law.

The final report has chapters and recommendations on: intellectual property and development; health; agriculture and genetic resources; traditional knowledge, access and benefit sharing and geographical indications; copyright, software and the Internet; patent reform; institutional capacity; and the international architecture.

[The report is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.]