Towards a gold standard for IP-related conflict of interest declarations in scholarly publications

It is now widely accepted that IP rights such as patents, should be regarded as a financial conflict of interest (coi, also referred to as competing interest) if the technical teachings protected by them relate to the contents of a scholarly publication authored by the inventors. Authors frequently fail to comply with this duty, thus jeopardizing the reputation of academic research and the translation of results into commercial products for the benefit of the public. Legal complexity poor coordination between stakeholders such as inventors, authors, university transfer offices and patent attorneys, but also the lack of harmonization between the guidelines of scholarly journal, encumber authors who wish to comply with their disclosure duties. A set of criteria is proposed here that, if implemented universally, could serve as a gold standard for the disclosure of patents in scholarly publications.