A Study on Promoting the Use of Intellectual Property by Using the Common Domain for Strengthening the Innovative Fundamentals(in Japanese)

Innovation is indispensable for keeping our social and economic activities not only internationally competitive but sustainable. It is, therefore, one of the most important national policies to create the social and economic fundamentals which may create innovation. We call them “innovative fundamentals.” The recent expansion of social networks supported by ICT (information & communications technology) is characterized by the enormous spread of information and creation of a wide range of networks in our society. These significantly affect the way we interact with existing ideas and create new ideas. Responding to such changes, ideas and knowledge attained by research & development (R&D) activities must be flexibly utilized further for the creation of new innovation. However, we rarely expect innovation by using only one type of idea and/or knowledge. Innovation happens only after the use of new ideas stemming from the interaction of various ideas and knowledge. Different types of intellectual property in the common domain must have the force necessary to interact with one another and create the strong fundamentals needed for future innovation. In this paper, we indicate the importance of strengthening intellectual property in the common domain to advance innovation. In addition, we discuss several policy measures based on the idea of the Commons for the creation of such environment that can cause innovation continuously.