Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to Establish 3 Trillion Won Technology Commercialization Fund by 2025

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Dongwoo Lee] The government will establish a public-private joint commercialization support fund worth 3 trillion won from next year until 2025. It will also ease regulations related to startups at public research institutes to promote the commercialization of technologies transferred or developed by companies.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced that on the 24th, it held a 'Public-Private Technology Innovation Alliance' meeting at Yonsei University with related ministries to discuss a pan-government strategy to promote technology commercialization.

The ministry evaluated that although the number of public technology transfers exceeded 15,000 for the first time last year, more than three times the number from ten years ago, and the commercialization performance using government research and development (R&D) technologies reached 33,000 cases annually in 2020, impactful results were lacking.

Accordingly, the government plans to establish a public-private joint commercialization support fund worth 3 trillion won from next year until 2025. In particular, a fund operated by corporate venture capital (CVC) will be created with a scale of over 300 billion won to enable large and medium-sized enterprises to invest in innovative companies.

It is also considering introducing the 'Innovation Box' system, which reduces tax burdens on income generated from patents. The public technology transfer system will also be partially reformed. Until now, the principle was non-exclusive licensing allowing other companies to imitate technologies of companies that successfully commercialized public technologies, but going forward, companies and public research institutes will be able to choose exclusive licensing considering technology demand and characteristics.

The ministry plans to encourage startups within public research institutes by easing regulations, such as lowering the mandatory equity holding ratio from 50% to 30% when establishing technology holding companies for startup support.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.