This is not Newton's binomial!

The Prosecutor General's Office accused the Academy of Sciences of infringing on the interests of the state

On Friday, the Prosecutor General's Office submitted a report to the President of the Academy of Sciences, Yuri Osipov, that the Russian Academy of Sciences was convicted of violating legislation on the protection of intellectual property and on the use of state property. The leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences assures that the violations identified in the work of the RAS by the Prosecutor General’s Office “are purely technical in nature,” and some of the claims of law enforcement officers are completely incorrect.

The official statement, which was distributed by the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office, stated: when submitting applications for patents, the institutes of the Academy of Sciences did not indicate that these intellectual property objects were obtained from budget funds. Simply put, according to law enforcement officers, the scientists did not indicate that the exclusive right to a particular patent belonged to the state, the state as the copyright holder did not receive anything, and therefore, the budget money invested in scientific research did not pay off. “Despite the impressive amount of funding for the RAS and its regional branches from the federal budget, there are no intellectual property objects, the exclusive rights to which belong to the Russian Federation (on behalf of which the RAS acts), according to Rospatent,” representatives emphasize Prosecutor General's Office. And this despite the fact that more than a hundred research institutes and other scientific institutions of the Academy of Sciences “participated in the implementation of federal and regional target programs, carrying out research and development work on a reimbursable basis (at public expense - Ed. ).” Some institutes did not even send notifications to government agencies that ordered research about each item of intellectual property received during the execution of a government contract. “In addition,” says the conclusion of the Prosecutor General’s Office, “cases were identified of registration of rights to the results of these activities obtained from budgetary funds in the name of individuals or transferring them without legal registration to third parties.”

An audit conducted by the supervisory agency showed that in addition to the “free handling” of the fruits of research conducted at the expense of the budget, the academy violates the procedure for disposing of the property entrusted to it, including land plots. A statement from the Prosecutor General's Office said that “some organizations subordinate to the Russian Academy of Sciences” violated current legislation by renting out land and real estate to commercial structures. “Currently, the academy has more than two hundred unfinished construction projects, some of which have been suspended since the beginning of the 90s,” prosecutors have calculated. “At the same time, information about some demolished real estate objects and newly built buildings is not in the federal property register.”

According to the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the list of prosecutorial claims is not news for the academy. As Vladimir Ivanov, Deputy Chief Scientific Secretary of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to RIA Novosti, the Prosecutor General’s Office conducted its inspection back in May, and only now its results have become public. Commenting on the comments listed in the conclusion of the prosecutor's office, Mr. Ivanov noted that indeed the Russian Academy of Sciences, like the Academy of Sciences of any other state, receives money from the treasury for fundamental research. But in the course of such research, “in principle, it is impossible to obtain a result that would be under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.” “For example, who is responsible for Newton's law - Great Britain? - the academician is perplexed. “And that’s exactly what this press release says.” According to Mr. Ivanov, the state can only make claims regarding the use of money that RAS institutes receive under grants or under business agreements that are concluded within the framework of federal target programs.

“The prosecutor’s office, as far as I know, checked not only us, but also other organizations,” said an official representative of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The deputy chief scientific secretary of the academy admitted: “In this regard, the Academy of Sciences looks no better and no worse than everyone else - the same problems exist almost everywhere.” But, he emphasized, the RAS is ready to eliminate only those shortcomings and listen only to those comments “that really exist.”

Mikhail MOSHKIN