By Ryan Whalen (SIM Assistant Professor):

I recently wrote a short piece for Policy Options magazine about the state of innovation data in Canada. The Federal Government has stressed the importance of Canadian innovation, the merits of evidence-based policymaking, and the value of open data. Unfortunately, these professed ideals seem to be lost in translation when it comes to the formulation of innovation data policy.

Unfortunately, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) insists on securing its data behind a paywall, and requiring researchers to sign restrictive non-disclosure agreements if they wish to have bulk data access. This fee-for-data policy leads to a variety of inefficiencies for Canadian R&D and research on Canadian innovation.

I submitted access to information requests to determine just how much money CIPO was bringing in by insisting on charging for this data. Doing so revealed that in recent years CIPO has grossed about $24,000 per year by selling patent data. In the context of an organization with a $150 million budget, the few thousand dollars made by selling Canadian innovation data back to the public (its rightful owners) is negligible.

Instead of walling-off its data, CIPO should open it to all by providing access to bulk data in the same way that the USPTO—its American peer—does. Doing so would entail a marginal cost for CIPO, while offering great benefits to Canadian innovation, and innovation policymaking.