[LUM#14] The right to think

[LUM Magazine] - Published on July 20, 2021 in Valorization

What do the latest Goncourt Prize, the Pfizer messenger RNA vaccine, and the video game Fortnite have in common? messenger RNA vaccine and the video game Fortnite? All three are "products of the human mind and are therefore therefore potentially subject to intellectual property law," explains Agnès Robin*, a lecturer and researcher in private law and specialist in the field.

"My family made me aware of artistic creation, as well as technology and IT, from a very early age." This is undoubtedly what prompted young Agnès Robin, then a law student at Nanterre, to pursue what was, in the mid-1990s, only an optional subject: intellectual property law. "The code that governed it in 1992 was four times thinner than the one in 2020," recalls the woman who now heads the highly regarded master's program in intellectual property and digital law, with a smile .

Aesthetic creations and technical creations

While intellectual property rights first emerged at the end of the 18th century with the advent of industrial capitalism
, it was in the second half of the 20th century that they really took off. The boom in cultural and creative industries, followed of course by the development of digital technology, cemented the essential role of these rights. "All these industries operate on and thanks to the exploitation of intellectual property rights," emphasizes Agnès Robin. "These rights play an active role in corporate strategy, whether in the cultural or technological field, because they are instruments for enhancing the value of intellectual assets."

This strategy is adopted not only by companies, but also by public research institutions, as Agnès Robin discovered when, as a doctoral student, she worked as a substitute in the CNRS's valorization and partnership department , "which was a pioneer in this policy. I drafted contracts with industrialists and negotiated joint ownership of the results of public research. That's when I realized that this was a subject that had not yet been fully explored." Intellectual joint ownership became the subject of her thesis and the main focus of her research work.

The challenge of open science

The numerous reforms affecting higher education and research, particularly those concerning university autonomy, place intellectual property law at the heart of their development more than ever before. "Universities develop a lot of applied research, whichis oftenpatentable, through partnerships with industry, " explains the researcher. "It's a way of getting companies to invest in public research." It is also a real lever for public research institutions to promote the results of their teams' work .

In this era of open data, intellectual property law specialists are now facing a new challenge: open science. This policy encourages the open access dissemination of research data, raising questions about the legal status of such data. The researcher has been working on this topic for four years as part of the interdisciplinary CommonData project. "This issue requires the coordination of numerous mechanisms that are not always consistent with each other: intellectual property law, research law, and the law governing relations between the public and the administration, which regulates the opening up of public data..." When intellectual property gives rise to a real headache.

*UMR Dynamics of Law (UM – CNRS)

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