Background
This course aims to enable the participants to get a broad overview of intellectual property rights and discuss how they can be used to support and impact academic research. The course also aims to introduce the role intellectual property rights play in the utilisation of life science research. The purpose of the course is to spread general awareness about intellectual property rights to academic researchers by mixing discussions with hands-on search exercises.
Aims and objectives
After completion of the course, the participant shall be able to:
- demonstrate a basic understanding of how patent information can be used in a research context
- reflect on the value of using patent information in a research context
- identify intellectual assets in research projects
- perform a search for patent documents and assess their relevance in relation to the purpose of the search
Content
Intellectual property rights are the legal rights that protect the results of intellectual work. The right to patent is one of the most well-known rights; it protects inventions that are novel, non-obvious, and have an industrial use. The focus of the course is to discuss various aspects of intellectual property rights that are essential to know for a future career both within and outside academia. During the course, the participants will be able to learn from various stakeholders within the intellectual property rights industry.
Topics include:
- your right to intellectual assets as a researcher in Sweden (teachers’ exception)
- how you can manage intellectual property rights in research collaborations, including other jurisdictions than Sweden
- how publishing your research results can affect your legal possibilities to protect your results
- how you can identify research groups to collaborate with using patent information
- ethical considerations of patenting in relation to open science / access / innovation.
Teaching and learning activities
The course will be built on five seminars, each three hours long, over the course of one week. The seminars will be followed by workshops that will introduce tools and databases that can be used to identify and evaluate intellectual property rights. The workshops will be based on the participants’ own research projects.
Attendance is mandatory for all participants. The course director assesses if and, in that case, how absence can be compensated.
Examination
The participants are examined individually on a written report.
Recommended readings
Inventor’s handbook, European Patent Office
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