Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Intellectual Property
(asked on 3rd June 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many intellectual property licences the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs holds under contracts or terms of reference for (1) grants, (2) pre-procurement or proof of concept work, and (3) procurement; how many of those have sub-licensing rights; how many of those have resulted in sub-licensing; and how many of those sub-licences are for patents, and for which countries.
Answered by
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Our standard terms and conditions have clauses setting out ownership, rights and permitted use of intellectual property (IP) assets created in the course of suppliers’ work for DEFRA. We do not keep a central register of IP assets and rights; these are the responsibility of contract owners and contract managers across DEFRA group.
To answer the noble Lady's question, we would have to access all individual contracts to ascertain what IP licensing terms have been put in place. This would mean that this request is manifestly unreasonable on the grounds of cost and time.