In knowledge economies, patent agencies are often viewed as a relevant instrument of an efficient innovation policy. This paper brings a new support to that idea. We claim that these agencies should play an increasing role in the regulation of the relation between heterogeneous private R&D labs and public fundamental research units, especially concerning the question of the appropriation of free basic research results. Since these two institutions work with opposite institutional arrangements (see Dasgupta and David [9]), we essentially argue that there is, on the one hand, an over-appropriation of these results while, on the other hand, there is also an under-provision of free usable results issued from more fundamental research. We show how a public patent office can restore efficiency
