Designs are a type of intellectual property (IP), which if protected, can provide value for the owner.36 The Cabinet Office told us that it owns the IP for the designs it paid for and that it either owns all or a “substantial chunk” of the IP for the majority of the designs it could have made but chose not to. We asked the Cabinet Office how it plans to maximise 30 Q 77; C&AG’s Report para 3.10 31 Q 85 32 Q 48; C&AG’s Report, paras 15, 4.8 & 4.10 33 Q 126 34 Q 126; C&AG’s Report, para 4.3 35 C&AG’s Report, paras 4.8–4.12 & Figure 6 36 GOV.UK, ‘Intellectual property and your work’, accessed 28 October 2020 Covid-19: Supply of ventilators 15 the value of the IP that it owns. It told us that, where it paid for a manufacturer’s design work as part of the challenge it will get a royalty if a manufacture uses the design to take a unit to market.37 However, while it acknowledged that this was something it would need to check on, it told us that there was no set process in place to do this and that it currently relies on the goodwill of manufacturers.38 In response to our wider concerns that the government is in the habit of giving away technology without seeking to gain value from it, Cabinet Office agreed that it would look at how government contracts consider the issue of intellectual property.39 37 Qq 90, 135 38 Qq 136–138 39 Q 139 16 Covid-19: Supply of ventilators