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takyon writes:

France needs more mesures pour l'innovation, according to a new report:

France isn't the hotbed of innovation it would like to be, and one reason is that scientific research has traditionally been done by public servants, who rarely start a company to turn their discoveries into new products or services. A 1999 law that aimed to change that by stimulating entrepreneurship has not had the intended effects, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report recommends relaxing the rules for academics who want to embark on a commercial adventure, rewarding those who file patents, and giving entrepreneurial scientists more recognition.

Judged solely by the number of patent filings, France may seem quite an entrepreneurial country; it ranks sixth globally, according to the latest figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization. But public researchers are often loath to become entrepreneurs. The French government asked Jean-Luc Beylat, president of Nokia Bell Labs France in Paris, and Pierre Tambourin, general director of the biocluster Genopole in Evry, to review the so-called Allègre Law of 1999, which sought to make it easier for scientists to engage in entrepreneurship, as well as similar initiatives.

[...] The authors suggest further loosening the rules. Researchers should be allowed to spend up to 10 years on developing their spin-off and to work 50% of their time on consulting activities, instead of the current 20%, for instance. They should also be given 3 years to resell their share and be allowed to keep up to 20% of it. The Public Service Ethics Commission should play a smaller role, the authors say, and entrepreneurial activities should be a factor in the career advancement of publicly funded researchers.

Original Submission