Brazil's Innovation Law

From:
http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=197&language=1
"Innovation is now widely acknowledged as an essential tool for development. Other nations would do well to learn from the political challenges that Brazil's new legislation has unearthed."
...
"An important element of the new law is its explicit attempt to increase social inclusion by encouraging public participation in decision making — which has rarely featured in the country's history. The law was drawn up with public consultations, primarily through posting a draft version on the Internet and asking for comments from different segments of society before it was discussed at public meetings. The final draft was approved in December 2004 (see Brazil adopts innovation law), and came into force last October.

The law has three main components: incentives for building and strengthening partnerships between universities, research institutes and private companies; incentives to encourage the participation of universities and research institutes in the innovation process; and incentives for promoting innovation within private companies.

A key component is that it encourages public and private companies to share research staff, funding and facilities, including scientific laboratories. This was previously forbidden on the grounds that it meant that public funds would be subsidising private business.

In principle, one of the benefits of the new legislation is that it provides a way for private companies to receive government funding for innovation projects. Whether this materialises has yet to be seen; so far the government has not given any details on what form this support will take.

Private companies have also welcomed the government's promise to give tax credits for investment in research and development, although the details of how this will work have also not yet been clarified."
For more hopes and doubts, read the complete article at SciDev.Net