A certain missing of the point of having markets and differences here:

The rules for academic spin-offs must change to inspire a British Google

We’re not in fact interested in there being a British Google in the first place. The value comes from being able to use, not from having created. So, where something is created matters not - it’s where it’s possible to use. But leave that obvious point aside.

In the UK, universities are free to set their own rules for what happens when a professor starts a company. The rules are administered by the TTO (Technology Transfer Office), three letters that, depending on the university, can strike fear into the heart of an enterprising academic.

A recent report from the Royal Academy of Engineers showed that universities are taking anywhere between zero and 60 per cent.

We agree that there are likely to be more spin offs where the academics keep more of the loot. But that’s not quite the point here.

But we need a national IP policy to allow universities to fulfil this potential, and to make sure that the British Google is as likely to come from Leeds as Cambridge.

No. For this is to miss what having different policies - we could even say a market in policies - does for us. Different people try different things, we see that some work and some don’t. People, logically enough, then do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

A national policy on anything kills off that process.

The point being that yes, we do need the idiots doing the wrong thing in order to show what is the right. Leave it be - because exactly that failure of bad policy is a self-solving problem in a marketplace.