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Research and innovation
News article11 February 2022Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

Manifesto for EU COVID-19 Research: extended until 2023 to keep mobilising relevant research results in the fight against the pandemic

With this time extension, the Commission aims to allow Manifesto endorsers to maintain their initiatives under the Manifesto principles running. It also aims to offer the possibility for others to still endorse it and engage in concrete actions to facilitate the sharing and access to IP in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Manifesto is a policy statement providing guiding principles for beneficiaries of EU funded research grants to ensure that their results are made available in a timely and affordable manner to guarantee the highest potential impact in the fight against COVID-19.

The set of guiding principles anchored in the Manifesto are:

  1. Make the generated results, whether tangible or intangible, public and accessible without delay, for instance on the Horizon Results Platform, on an existing IP sharing platform, or through an existing patent pool.
  2. Make scientific papers and research data available in open access without delay and following the FAIR principles via preprint servers or public repositories, with rights for others to build upon the publications and data and with access to the tools needed for their validation. In particular, make COVID-19 research data available through the European COVID-19 Data Platform.
  3. Where possible, grant for a limited time, non-exclusive royalty free licences on the intellectual property resulting from EU-funded research. These non-exclusive royalty free licenses shall be given in exchange for the licensees’ commitment to rapidly and broadly distribute the resulting products and services under fair and reasonable conditions to prevent, diagnose, treat and contain COVID-19.

The importance of addressing the pandemic through voluntary licensing mechanisms has been recently reiterated by the European Parliament in the context of the Walsmann Report on the European Intellectual Property Action Plan to support the recovery and improve the resilience of the EU.

So far, this initiative has been a success as more than 650 organisations (including universities, research institutes and private companies) and more than 1875 individuals endorsed the Manifesto from all over Europe and beyond. International organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the Medicines Patent Pool have also endorsed it. This shows a clear commitment and strong engagement towards a better valorisation of research results, leaving no one behind.

The Commission is currently gathering information on the actions undertaken by the Manifesto endorsers to evaluate the impact of this voluntary initiative. The elements gathered will contribute to raise awareness on how knowledge valorisation can contribute to overcoming health emergencies and societal challenges.

More information

Manifesto website.
EU research and innovation in the common European response to the coronavirus outbreak
EU valorisation webpage

See more highlights relating to the EU Knowledge Valorisation policy

Details

Publication date
11 February 2022
Author
Directorate-General for Research and Innovation