Wednesday Salon

[how]

@fukami how is https://www.deep.brussels/ going? Are you still organizing the Wednesday Salon?

Have you seen my message about the MANIFESTO FOR COVID-19 RESEARCH?

@how

If you are a Horizon 2020 beneficiary, you received an email from the Commission calling you to support the MANIFESTO FOR EU COVID-19 RESEARCH , to “maximise the accessibility of research results in the fight against COVID-19”.

In this email, there’s a summary of the commitments you make when you endorse the manifesto. The third point triggered my attention (emphasis mine):

• 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.

I find it outraging that we are called to endorse such a policy, where in my opinion, and I know it’s shared by a number of people here EU-funded research should belong to the public. Unfortunately I do not have the capacity to respond properly to this call to endorse proprietary intellect, so I urge you to question the manifesto before endorsing it, especially as it is quietly proposed as a moral duty to band together “to fight COVID-19”. I urge you to question this proposition and to make a point in telling the Commission that in order to maximise the accessibility of research results, public money must result in public research".