The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) have published a statement on the relations of the intellectual property (IP) law and open science in April. The statement concludes that, while the IP law provides a framework in which open science can operate, the patent law is not up to the standards of open science, therefore ALLEA calls for its modernisation.

The report states that, in order to align with open science principles, greater clarity about non-commercial knowledge use and the introduction of “grace periods” of at least one year allowing open publication are needed. In addition, ALLEA states that public funding should not be substituted by patent income, and only used as a potentially useful supplement. Lastly, the statement criticises the use of patent activity as an evaluation method. It argues that using it as such may incentivise collecting non-performing patents, the prioritisation of which brings no benefits, and wastes resources.