How Canada can be an innovation leader

It’s not good enough to have an intellectual property policy based on the desire to assuage the demands of our trading partners. Canadians must think innovation policies through as a nation. Naturally, Canada must take account of global rules and the need for appropriate harmonization, but those rules provide a significant leeway.

Are Canadians simply less creative and innovative than other countries? Should we see ourselves as consumers and users of the creativity of others? Exactly the opposite is true. Canada has a vibrant community of writers, songwriters, filmmakers, to name just a few. Canada ranks among the very top countries in published scientific articles per capita. Yet Canada also ranks much lower on the global innovation scale. Why? In short because Canadians have ideas, but many of them do not know how to exploit them and the policy environment is not well structured to support them, according to a report in The Globe and Mail.

What Canada needs at this critical juncture is a conversation about how to generate more economic impacts from innovation and creativity. As we look at our patent, copyright and other intellectual property rules, for example, how much protection do we actually need? How much is enough to create the right incentives, and how much is too much? Is our venture capital market good enough? Are our courts well equipped to deal with intellectual property matters?  >>More here

SOURCE:  theglobeandmail.com