Outbound Open Innovation Policy for Unexploited Public Funded Intellectual Property

This paper reports the findings of a comparative study of outbound open innovation policy currently adopted by universities from various countries to prevent and reduce the accumulation of unexploited public funded intellectual property (PFIP). Previous studies report that a large portion of PFIP in Malaysian public universities remains unexploited as they are neither used nor licensed to the external parties. Hence, the need to develop a policy that enables the exploitation of PFIP outside the universities' boundaries through permissive licensing scheme. This study compared the policy of five public universities from four countries that adopt outbound open innovation to speed up the exploitation process as well as to reduce costs and time spent in exploiting PFIP. The scope of comparison is the policy aim and application, licensing conditions and licensing procedures. The criterion used to compare the policy is their similarities, differences and special/ unique features in preventing and reducing the accumulation of unexploited PFIP. The findings from the comparative study help to provide an insight of outbound open innovation policy for unexploited PFIP to be adopted in Malaysian public universities.