WP 2 STRATEGIC ACTIONS AIMED AT THE DESIGN OF ERA-PG

Workpackage leader: Partner 4, UK
UK, Biotechnological and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)

The aim of this workpackage is to pave the way for durable co-operation between national programmes and industrial partners.

Objectives

• Identity complementarities and potential joint activities between programmes
• Design best practices for common evaluation systems and shared transnational administration systems
• Identify legal barriers that may hinder co-operation and form common legal frameworks regulating a.o. transnational IP rights and patenting.
• Prepare European Plant Genomics Industrial Platform for further exploitation and innovation

Tasks

Complementarities between national programmes
An inventory will be made of complementarities between national programmes and of the potential of future co-operation and exchange. Proposals will be forumlated for transnational and interdisciplinary co-operations that avoid redundancy and fill in research gaps. A meeting will be organised for science representatives to formulate, supported by a rapporteur, a white paper on current projects, existing collaborations, overlaps and gaps in Europe's national plant genomics programmes, also in relation to programmes outside Europe.

Barriers that hinder transnational co-operation
Administrative and legal barriers that hinder transnational co-operation will be anlaysed and suggestions will be put forward how to solve or circumvent thes. This shall lead to a desig of best practices for common evaluation systems and shared transnational administration systems aimed at opening up national programmes.

Arrangements for transnational contracts and IP rights
A report will be made on how national programmes made arrangements for patenting, support and prepare IP rights, exploit results and support innovation. Subsequently, an external legal advisor shall make a comparative summary in order to work out a general scheme for exploitation of PR within European plant genomics programme.

Network co-ordination activities and support to the consortium management
The preparation of the position papers and reports, and the organisation of the meeting of science representatives, meetings of the Network Steering Committee, and the second 'major' workshop will be supported by the Joint Secretariat.

Events and Reports
Strategy meetings with programme makers and leading scientists will be organised to forumulate ideas for and further stimulate potential co-operation. A postion paper on complementarities and potential joint activities, a paper on best practices in evaluation and administration systems, and a report on exploitation of IP and innovation are foreseen for 2005. A joint workshop presenting and discussing the findings will bridge this workpackage with the next.