Technical Regulation for Innovation
On May 29, at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum a round table was held, organized by the Skolkovo Foundation, titled 'Normative-Technical Regulation in the Digital Age: The Elimination of Barriers to Creativity and Innovation'. Laboratory Staff participated heavily in the preparation and delivery of the discussion.
The development of technology is dramatically changing public relations. A high quality of life, resource conservation, product competitiveness in foreign markets, the collapsing of outdated, inefficient industries; the proper development of science and technology depends on the progressiveness of legislative and technical regulations. "The matter of technical standards is becoming more and more legal", said Igor Drozdov, Senior Vice-President of Skolkovo, in his opening remarks, and he invited the panelists to discuss how technical standards affect legal regulation in general.
The session was attended by Iaonnis Lianos, Chief Researcher, Director of Research Initiatives at the International Laboratory for Law and Development HSE-Skolkovo; Pierre Régibeau, Vice-President of the European Competition Practice at Charles River Associates; Alexey Abramov, head of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology; Sergey Matveev, Deputy Director of the Department of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation; Ekaterina Chukovskaya, Professor in the school-Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre School named after V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko; Marina Zhunich, Head of Department on the Interaction with Public Authorities at Google Russia; and Andrei Kolosovsky, Director of Legal, Corporate Affairs and Government relations at Microsoft, Russia, LLC.
The discussions were built around three central aspects. Technical standards are incarnated in industry-specific standards, which create an advantage for individual economic agents – companies, and even entire States. In other words, we speak of the establishment of certain technical standards used by companies as economic tools to achieve dominant positions in the market. This, coupled with an impressive portfolio of patents for technical standards, can become a serious obstacle to the development of competitive relations. Where is the balance between security, public interest and the promotion of competition? Big companies lobby for the adoption of different technical standards, not taking into account the interests of consumers, but often they have to 'take a step back' and return to the customers' needs, changing regulation in accordance with their requirements.
The second theme was the interaction of technical standards with innovation, with creative activities and the cultural sphere, which also has a plurality of standards, which tend to be in active development. What reassessment of the measures of technical regulation is required in connection with the development of new production technologies? Is it possible to include the development of standards that are not yet applicable to existing and nascent tech but instead are for 'technology-to-be' innovations, or should the inheritance of technical standards always be a game of catch-up?
The third aspect was the impact of technical decisions on legal practice and enforcement. How do technical standards allow the implementation of enforcement without personal intervention? The introduction of technical standards sometimes eliminates human intervention in the application of the law, and it raises new questions for the industrial community, technology companies, and lawmakers.