At the end of July the Council of Agriculture put on its first-ever agtech trade fair, which aimed to introduce the fruits of Taiwan's agricultural technology to citizens and industry. Through this platform, the COA hopes to find success in transferring and commercializing the agricultural technology it develops.
COA Minister Lee Ching-lung explains that because the government has supplied most of the funding for agricultural research, for many years the research results were viewed as public property. Both new plant varieties and new biotechnology were simply given free of charge to farmers and fishermen. Only rarely did the government seek any protection for its intellectual property. Yet in spite of the government's generosity, the nation's farmers didn't treasure the innovations, and the results of Taiwan's research quickly made their way to mainland China or Southeast Asia, to be copied by the nation's competitors.
With growing emphasis placed on intellectual property rights and in the spirit of the Basic Law on Science and Technology, the COA in 2001 introduced its Guidelines on the Ownership and Use of Council of Agriculture Research Results, which govern how research results and techniques developed by the COA can be transferred to the private sector for production and marketing. Four years ago the COA earned less than NT$100,000 in technology licensing fees, but this year it exceeded NT$10 million.
NT$10 million may not seem like much, but it is encouraging to researchers. Apart from the pleasure they get in having their inventions used, 40% of the transfer fees go to the researchers themselves.
So that more companies can benefit, the COA also sells "non-exclusive" rights for an average of about NT$500,000. But most companies, seeking the advantages of a monopoly, are willing to pay more for exclusive rights. One problem is that the low level of valuation skills in Taiwan puts off many companies. Nevertheless, the Fisheries Research Institute's newly developed fish-scale collagen may represent a new economic miracle.
The COA estimates annual domestic production of collagen at NT$5 billion. So as not to sell this technology on the cheap, the Fisheries Research Institute asked a firm of accountants with experience in making valuations for manufacturers to set the price, which came in at several tens of millions of NT dollars. That may well set a record for the sale of agtech in Taiwan.
