Sign on to Ten U Letter
UAEM is looking for organisational sign-ons to our open letter to TenU regarding their upcoming event on Affordable Access and University Technology Transfer. Please add your Organisation's name by Friday the 30th of May.
Background: TenU is a group of 10 prestigious university Tech Transfer Offices (TTOs) in the UK, US and Belgium, with a very high combined research output, particularly in life sciences. Their shared aim is to promote 'best practice' in uni tech transfer by sharing knowledge, publishing guides and hosting events on a range of topics. They're publicly funded and are seen as industry leaders by many smaller TTOs. Their guides on university spinouts USIT and USIT for software have garnered attention internationally and sparked a wave of policy changes at unis in the UK and beyond. The UK government commissioned an independent review of university spinouts which touts the virtues of TenU's USIT guide.
Despite their stated aim of maximising societal impact, they have not collectively made any commitment to ensuring access to the technologies they develop. The USIT guide actively discourages other university TTOs from incorporating access clauses into spinout transfer agreements: "While parties agree global access is a ‘nice to have’ as part of the licence (...) Parties aiming for a quick process would be well advised to keep things simple and avoid these more controversial provisions."
We believe equitable global access to publicly-funded drugs is the bare minimum.
UAEM's work so far: UAEM, acting in the UK, US and Belgium, has pushed TenU on a number of issues relating to access. We have seen modest progress:
All TenU members have adopted, trialled or planned to trial the Affordable Access Plan Provision, a UAEM and Medicines Patent Pool developed piece of contract language that requires the development of an access plan for all technologies originating in a university when they reach the market. This is because of consistent local and international campaigning.
TenU has agreed to host a webinar event this summer entitled 'TenU Hosts: Affordable Access'. We see this as a chance to spark conversations about access mechanisms with a wider audience of university TTOs.
Issue: TenU doesn't want to include the appropriate stakeholders in this discussion. The event's panel is not confirmed, but seems likely to be composed of representatives from TTOs, Venture Capital firms and Industry. They must incorporate the voices of experts in incorporating access mechanisms into (university) tech transfer agreements.
Help us make sure that this opportunity doesn't just become an echo chamber of ideas with a cursory nod to the importance of access like the USIT guide. Help us make this event the vehicle that drives TenU to make real public commitments to access.
