Gal Zlikeh, the Accountant General at the Israel Ministry of Finance has announced a three month special operation to identify Intellectual Property (IP) that has been registered by government employees in their own names.
Civil servants and other government workers will be requested to report any such intellectual property, and those that do report have been promised immunity from criminal proeedings. Zlikeh estimates that there are millions of dollars worth of such assets missapropriated in this manner.
Under Israel Law, employees do not own patents relating to their field of employment, with special laws relating to soldiers and others in the national sector.
Civil servants, including medical staff of national hospitals, workers of nationalized industries such as defence companies, and university academics do not own intellectual property IP such as patents and trademarks that result from research relating to their employment which are directly or indirectly national assets.
We note however that there is no incentive and no mechanism for the government to effectively file patents directly. Since IP is a fully taxable asset, we suggest that with the taxman conviscating a healthy slice of income generated from such assets anyway, this incentive may yield some quick profit but in the long term will simply kill the golden goose. The universities, particularly the Weizman Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem through technology transfer companies Yeda and Yissum respectively, have mechanisms that provide 40% or 50% of royalties from IP to inventors. Probably half of this is paid in taxes, so the country does well from the creativity of its workers.
Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizman was a chemist who patented a method for synthesizing acetone and because of the royalties generated, could live in style and open doors with world leaders in a way that Ben Gurion could never manage.
Under the current government with liberal capitalists like Netanyahu out of office, and the government controlled by the bolshevists in the Labor Party, this short-sighted development is not a surprise.
The real solution is privatization and free market reform a la Milton Friedman, but that will need a general election.
Sometimes privatization should be executed
Sometimes civil servants should be executed. So what?
[...] Israel’s former Accountant General Gal Zlikeh launched an enquiry into the issue. See Israel Finance Ministry Accountant General Launches Probe into IP missapropriation by Civil Servant…. [...]