What does the Laffitte Bill have in store ?

The relationships between public research and private companies are acknowledged to be at the heart of the present economic growth and innovative development. However, the French institutional system has been curbing interactions between research and industry. State-employed researchers were not legally entitled to benefit from the results of their research or to be involved in the creation of private companies which would develop this research. Joint research efforts could only be carried out thanks to ingenious but unstable partnerships with associations. The bill proposed by Senator Pierre Laffitte, which came into being in July 1999, aims to put an end definitively to this situation. Will it manage to do this ? Whether it does or not, this bill raises many questions about the nature of the interaction between public research and the market, as well as the legal context which exists and which may stimulate interaction.