N°6, 19th May 2008
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Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7)
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)
Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)
The 2008 EARTO Annual Conference takes place in Madrid on 28th - 30th May, hosted by FEDIT, the Spanish Federation of Innovation and Technology Organisations.
With over 230 registrations already at the time of writing, this is set to be the biggest and best EARTO annual conference ever. If you have not registered already, there are still a few places left, but please register quickly on the conference website here.
The theme of the conference is "Impacting New Markets", with parallel sessions on:
• new geographical markets (Asia-Pacific, India, Latin America ...)
• new service offerings to RTO customers (beyond traditional R&D services...)
• measuring RTO impact on customers and economies
The Annual General Meeting of the Association takes place in Madrid on 30th May at 9:00 am. All members are cordially invited to attend. The principle items of business will be to review the activities and finances of the Association in 2007, to consider current issues, and to discuss EARTO activities and agree the budget for 2008.
The meeting will also be invited to elect new members to the EARTO Executive Board. Following consultations among the members in the countries concerned, the following candidates have been proposed:
If your RTO is unable to attend the Annual General Meeting, you are encouraged to nominate another EARTO member who will be present in Madrid to represent your interests. To do this, please send a brief e-mail to Kadija Taffah naming the RTO/person who will represent you.
The EARTO annual conference will be preceded on the afternoon of May 28th by a meeting of the EARTO Working Group. This is an open meeting for all interested EARTO members and conference guests. The principal items proposed for presentation and discussion are:
• State Aid Framework for R&D&I
° Lorenz Kaiser, Head of Legal Affairs, Fraunhofer
• RTOs as "Services of General Interest" in EU competition policy
° Inigo Segura, Secretary General, FEDIT
Please visit the conference website to register for the Working Group meeting.
Many RTOs can expect to qualify for the 75% funding rate for non-profit research organisations in FP7. But first you must demonstrate to the Commission that you are indeed a "non-profit research organisation". This happens after your first FP7 proposal is accepted for funding and is part of the contract preparation and negotiation process.
Feedback from EARTO members indicates that this "FP7 validation" process is not always a smooth affair, and several members have contacted the EARTO Secretariat for advice.
The Secretariat would welcome feedback from other members who have experienced difficulties with their FP7 validation. The more experience we can accumulate, the more we can help other members in the future. Please contact Nina Baumeister.
The first meeting of the newly established Working Group on Quality and Excellence in RTO Management will take place in Brussels on 16th June.
The principal aim of this first meeting will be to identify the issues on which the Group would like to work. The initial scope of the group will be broad, later focussing down on issues of particular interest to the Group's members. Relevant issues are likely to be:
Further items on the agenda are:
Should you be interested in joining the group, please contact Kadija Taffah.
An EARTO Working Group on RTO Career Development Programmes and related human resource issues has formed. It will hold a first meeting in Trondheim on June 17th, hosted by SINTEF. Among the items for discussion are:
Any members interested in participating in this activity are invited to contact Kadija Taffah.
EARTO will give space in this newsletter to members who would like to publish their job vacancies . Please contact Nina Baumeister.
How successful is your RTO in FP7? To be able to compare yourself against other RTOs, EARTO has launched an FP7 Performance Benchmarking service. This is an online database in which you can enter - anonymously - basic information about the number of proposals you have submitted, how many passed threshold, and how many receive funding. Data are collected for all of the main programmes within FP7 (thematic priorities, ERC, SME measures etc).
The results, which will be updated regularly, will be available to EARTO members only, on the members-only page of the EARTO website. First results will be presented during the EARTO Working Group meeting in Madrid on May 28th.
For more information, please contact Nina Baumeister.
In the last newsletter we wrote about the IPR policy of the IMI Joint Undertaking. We are concerned that the IMI policy opens up possibilities for industrial partners in IMI-funded projects to obtain royalty-free access to foreground, to background, and to sideground, and also that access could also be available to affiliates (mother companies as well as downstream affiliates) anywhere in the world.
The CEOs of the larger national RTOs, meeting as the EARTO-EUROTECH Special Interest Group, issued a statement expressing these concerns after the recent EUROTECH meeting in Dresden on April 7th. EU Research Commissioner Potocnik has responded to this statement with a letter which opens the way to a meeting between EARTO experts and senior IMI management.
Since publishing the statement about IMI's IPR policy, further concerns have emerged in relation to the IMI funding model. The Commission and IMI have announced that research partners in IMI-funded projects will receive 75% funding for direct costs, with a fixed-rate 20% funding for overheads. This is unacceptable for RTOs, all the more so since the IMI intends to operate in a contract-research mode.
EARTO proposes to meet IMI to discuss these issues in mid-June. Further news here in due course.
The European Commission has published a recommendation on the "management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and a Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations". This is a non-binding recommendation for Member States and is intended to make EU national systems more coherent and boost transnational academia-industry cooperation to turn more research into lucrative business results.
EARTO's Intellectual Property Task Force made a substantial contribution to the Commission document. The published final version, however, contains a recommendation which is unacceptable to RTOs: “In the case of contract research the foreground generated by the public research organisation is owned by the private-sector party”. In EARTO's view, it is essential to distinguish between foreground results, on the one hand, and the related IPRs, on the other, and to provide for flexibility in negotiating IP ownership.
EARTO has since intervened with the Commission and obtained a meeting with senior DG Research personnel. It emerged that there is scope for a compromise. Discussions are continuing. A follow-up report will be published here shortly.
"Responsible Partnering" is a voluntary code of conduct for innovative companies and research organisations to enable them to collaborate more effectively and at the same time contribute to the achievement of their respective missions in a sustainable way.
The Responsible Partnering guidelines have been developed by experienced practitioners of collaborative research from four European associations representing the needs of Industry (EIRMA), Research & Technology Organisations (EARTO), Universities (EUA) and Knowledge Transfer Organisations (ProTon Europe). It is based on the analysis of the main problems preventing effective collaboration and also on the success stories where such collaboration was effectively achieved.
The Responsible Partnering Initiative continues in 2008, with two principal goals. One is to update the Responsible Partnering Code of Conduct, for which purpose a feedback event is planned in conjunction with the COPENMIND exhibition in Copenhagen on September 1st-3rd.
The other goal for 2008 is to prepare a document to help stakeholders in both the public and private sector better understand and implement the EU State Aid Framework for R&D and Innovation. The available Commission documents give little practical guidance about how to interpret and implement critical principles of the State Aid Framework. The result is uncertainty and a reluctance to take decisions: whereas the policy intention should be to provide certainty and hence stimulate innovation. The Responsible Partnering consortium aims to produce a document with practical advice to help stakeholders implement the State Aid Framework constructively.
Each year, EIRMA – The European Industrial Research Management Association – runs a special residential course for younger, rising R&D managers. The 3 1/2 day course is run by experienced R&D managers from industry or with industrial experience. This year EIRMA is making the course open to EARTO members.
The EIRMA course offers an interactive learning experience for younger R&D managers who are facing their second or third career promotion leading to a number of discontinuities in job content. The Management Study Group is based on exchange of and mutual learning from practical experience of participants, supported by a senior faculty and a series of lectures.
The cost of the course, including accommodation and meals, is €2,200 per person Link
Any interested member is invited to contact taffah@earto.eu
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Since December 2007 the EARTO meeting facilities are available in a reconfigured format.
The EARTO first-floor meeting room is available for meetings of up to 16 participants at cost price to EARTO members.
Bigger meetings can be accommodated in a large, modern meeting room on the 5th floor of our building at a very attractive price.
Members are also welcome to use our small room suitable for up to five people free of charge.
For further information, please contact Catherine Colassin at the EARTO Secretariat: +32-2-5028698
November 8 - 9, 2010
ESWIRP first workshop, Cologne, Germany
October 27, 2010
EARTO Innovation Prize - ceremony
October 11 - 15, 2010
2nd European Innovation Summit
September 23, 2010
DESCA Consultation Group Meeting
September 22, 2010
DESCA Core Meeting
September 16, 2010
EARTO Communication Task Force, Brussels
September 15, 2010
EARTO Innovation Prize Jury Meeting, Brussels
To subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, please send an e-mail to baumeister@earto.eu.