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The new Law on Science and Technology will remove the 'bottleneck' in commercializing research results
04/09/2024
The 2013 Law on Science and Technology will be amended and renamed the Law on Science, Technology and Innovation, helping to remove institutional obstacles and promote research results to the market.
 
Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Bui The Duy shared information when talking about the Law on Science and Technology 2013 (amended) which will be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration and comments in May 2025.

Deputy Minister Bui The Duy. Photo: Tung Dinh

Deputy Minister Bui The Duy. Photo:  Tung Dinh
 
According to the Deputy Minister, one of the "bottlenecks" that makes it difficult for research results to be put into practice is related to the legal corridor. In particular, the law on science and technology and many related laws do not accept scientists doing research without producing results. This leads to the fact that when registering tasks, scientists do not dare to register new content, mainly making content at the safety level, so it is not new and cannot be put into life. Besides, scientific and technological results also need a long time, from 10-20 years, to be put into life, so if we only evaluate the commercialization results within 1-5 years, it is not really complete. The
second reason is the separation between the research and development sector and production and business. Mr. Duy said that the Law on Science and Technology 2013 has mentioned the issue of placing research orders, but the orders must come from businesses or be linked with universities and businesses must go through staff exchange activities. While the current corridor for exchanging staff is not favorable, it is not yet a mandatory activity for lecturers and researchers. "The proposed revised law proposes to create a corridor for scientists to work with businesses, which is still considered research and teaching activities," he said.

Clearly defining the stages in research and development activities and innovation activities is also a matter of concern in the law revision. Currently, the issue of university research being transferred to businesses is not really suitable for practice. Therefore, the revised law needs to promote trial production in businesses, analyze the market to produce final products. He noted the conversion of research results into goods in the form of intellectual property for transfer. "The revised law will create a corridor of intermediary organizations to protect intellectual property and form a new science and technology market to facilitate the transfer of results."
The leaders of the Ministry of Science and Technology also suggested that national programs need to have a mechanism to hand over results to the host organization in the most favorable way, consider science and technology investment as a long-term investment, automatically assign authority to the host agency to continue commercialization, and invest more to create new products.

In the proposed amendments to the Law on Science and Technology, Deputy Minister Bui The Duy emphasized new policy groups. Accordingly, universities gradually become strong research entities equivalent to research institutes. Accordingly, to develop science and technology activities in universities, there must be research content, activities, and investment funds for universities. For example, there needs to be a program to train graduate students using funding from science and technology.
He said that many countries in the world consider graduate students as the main research force because they are young, creative and passionate about their work. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a training program, considering them as researchers, research workers, not just students. "There needs to be a support program after graduate students complete their study program, which helps them continue to independently carry out research activities," Mr. Duy emphasized.
The Deputy Minister said he wanted to propose separating the research team of universities and research institutes from the notion of considering them as officials of public service units. According to international experience, lecturers and researchers are encouraged to participate in running businesses established by research institutes and universities based on their research results and intellectual property. This helps bring innovation activities closer to universities, as well as encourage the establishment of spin-off businesses within universities, which both generate revenue and promote the commercialization of research results.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Huu Duc, Hanoi National University, hopes that the revised law will create a new legal corridor, creating conditions for the development and encouragement of innovation. "This is the first time we have formalized the concept of innovation, which will help build a new culture for Vietnamese people," he said. Currently, Hanoi National University focuses on investing in student startups. According to Prof. Duc, it is necessary to prepare human resources for innovation, starting right from adding subjects on innovation and creative startups into general subjects so that students have the skills and capacity to innovate.
Mr. Nguyen Phuong Tuan, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Science, Technology and Environment, acknowledged that the 2013 Law on Science and Technology is outdated and does not meet the strong development of science and technology in the context of the 4.0 Industrial Revolution. The recently amended and supplemented laws, such as those on land, planning, electronic transactions, and citizen identification, have been issued to forecast and adapt to the new situation. Therefore, "if we continue to delay the amendment of the 2013 Law on Science and Technology, it will no longer be consistent with international practices and current laws," he said.

Viettel engineers research 5G base station radio block. Photo: T. Huong

Viettel engineer researches the 5G base station radio block. Photo:  T. Huong
 
Synchronizing the provisions of the Law with financial policies
Currently, the financial investment mechanism for science and technology still has many shortcomings. Deputy Minister Duy said that the Ministry of Science and Technology has researched and evaluated the entire legal system, including many related laws. Reality shows that there is still a lack of synchronization between the laws on science and technology and the laws on finance.
Accordingly, the first thing that needs to be solved is how to synchronize the provisions of the Law on Science and Technology with existing financial policies, in order to make the most of all these policies.
Second, when there is investment and resources, they need to be used effectively, transparently and quickly. "To achieve this, the science and technology sector needs to strongly amend the regulations related to science and technology tasks, topics, projects, decentralization, delegation of authority, administrative procedure reform...", Mr. Duy said. The goal is to be open and transparent, thereby selecting the best topics and tasks quickly and conveniently.
In addition, it is necessary to adjust the regulations on procurement and bidding when using investment funds for technology, including both public investment funds of the State and funds of enterprises. This will encourage State support mechanisms. "It is necessary to research new issues, core technologies, and even purchase research results and inventions from abroad, then transfer them to enterprises so that they can use and develop them," said Deputy Minister Duy.

From the perspective of "finding a common voice among managers, financial investors and scientists", Deputy Minister Duy said that it is necessary to share the view that state funding for investment in science and technology results should be considered a long-term investment source. Instead of requiring immediate payment, funding should be assigned to the host units and production units so that they can invest and develop production and business. When these units create jobs and pay taxes to the State, we will recover capital through taxes and reinvest in science and technology activities. To achieve this, there needs to be close cooperation between science and technology agencies and financial agencies to understand each other and coordinate effectively.

Accordingly, the Ministry will propose in the Law regulations on determining what is and what is not property in science and technology results. For example, results that have been widely published and become human knowledge cannot be considered "private property". "We believe that sharing this view will help adjust the legal corridor of the Law on Science and Technology" as well as other laws, so that they become more suitable and operate more effectively, thereby creating an open environment for science, technology and innovation activities", Mr. Duy emphasized.

Nhu Quynh
According to VnExpress

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