In the wake of an unprecedented suit brought by the state against a private corporation for intellectual property theft, the Movement for Quality Government (MQG) calls for greater oversight on state employees working as researchers. The MQG believes such a crackdown would bring a very significant amount of money to the public coffers.
This week, the State of Israel sued Omrix Biopharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Inc., and its founder Robert Taub, for allegedly violating the state's intellectual property rights. According to the claim, filed in the Tel Aviv District Court, Omrix illegally made use of innovations originally developed by researchers at the Sheba Medical Center, a state research hospital. The state is seeking compensation of half a billion shekels.
In a letter to the Attorney General's Office, the MQG calls for a clarification of regulations regarding intellectual property rights in innovations developed in state facilities or by state employees. As part of this process of clarification, the MQG suggests, the state should offer incentives for employees to report their innovations, such as exist in other developed nations.
In the Omrix case, the MQG points out, the state claimed that it was unable to trace the intellectual property theft until now because it is "unable and is not meant to carry out detective or police investigations and surveillance of its employees.... The only practical way the state can discover if a particular researcher developed a patent, and the intellectual property rights therein, is through enforcing obligatory reporting to a state authority set up for that purpose." Current law does mandate such reports, but there is no built-in incentive to obey the regulation.
Recent reports indicate a widespread phenomenon of intellectual property developed by state employees being used without limitation by private companies, which translates into a serious economic cost to the state, the MQG believes. Therefore, the organization requested that the Attorney General order an urgent investigation to track down state employees violating the relevant laws, to initiate civil suits against the firms using intellectual property pilfered from state institutions and to file criminal charges against the lawbreakers.