Message-ID: <970210195850_-1910612127@emout09.mail.aol.com> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 20:15:16 -0500 From: mailto:StrutInst@AOL.COM> Subject: Re: Philanthopic Foundations and S&T Capacity To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
DATE: February 8, 1997
TO: John A. Daly
FROM: Mike Mychajlonka, Ph. D.
Exec. Dir.
Struten Inst.
RE: Building Science & Technology Capacity
The Struten Institute is concerned with helping the newly-independent country
of Ukraine. One of the main difficulties at present has to do with the fact
that some 95% of Ukraine's Intellectual Properties are protected only by a
Soviet Inventor's certificate which, these days, is worth nothing at all.
The result of this situation is that Ukraine's technical community is very
close-mouthed about their achievements at exactly the time when they should
be advertise their abilities. They may have good reason. Shortly after
Ukrainian independence was declared, an American law firm went to a number of
Ukraine's institutes and offered to help them patent their intellectual
properties so that the technologies they had developed could be licensed and
sold. Of course, to do this that firm would need complete disclosure of all
technical details about the subject to be patented. Such disclosure was
given by some institutes but not others. However, nothing much happened.
The law firm's client went bankrupt. Further activity ceased at that point.
While the law firm claims to have returned all technical data, I know of at
least one institute in Kyiv that still claims having lost control of 25 years
of work on a new antibiotic.
The Struten Institute is trying to help matters in three ways and could well
use Foundation help in this purpose:
a. Education Ukrainians need access to and facility with information
retrieval methods that will allow them to prepare their own patent searches.
Such course work will first be done through the Lviv Institute of Management
with the assistance of University Microfilms
b. Database Western technology companies need to realize that Ukraine is a
cost effective place for R & D. To this end, the Struten Institute keeps a
detailed database of Ukrainian technologists. This database needs to be
expanded.
c. Short Book Publishing Many Ukrainian technologists were, for many
decades, obliged to publish their works in the Russian language. English has
long been the international language of science. A good way for Ukrainian
scientists to promote their work would be to publish a short book, something
between a monograph and a review. The Struten Institute will help them with
this effort. The first such book should be available by the end of this
year. The Institute's publication capabilities need expansion.
Please contact mailto:strutinst@aol.com for further information.