Intellectual Property

The patent is a grant of a property right to the inventor, generally lasts for 20 years from when the inventor
attempts to patent their invention by filing it on any Intellectual Property (IP) Office. The list of things that can be
patented is lengthy and open to interpretation, but it covers anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful
process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.

One of the most important institutions to manage IP is WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organisation. On
their site (www.wipo.int/patents/) you can access a lot of important information about how to structure and
submit a patent. For a patent request to be granted, the invention must comply with three main conditions:

1. be novel (original when compared with the known state of the art.
2. have an inventive step (it must not be obvious for a specialist in its domain how to develop the invention
using the known state of the art).
3. have industrial application (it can be manufactured or used in any kind of industry).

If the patent request does not fulfil all of these prerequisites, the patent will not be granted. That, and the
considerable cost of patenting process, is why it is important to prepare for IP protection prior to patent
application:

a) Assure you keep your innovation novel: If you’re dealing with an innovative technology and you are
planning to protect it, do not disclose it publicly. Presenting it at a conference, publishing it in a paper,
defend a master or PhD thesis are all considered public events and therefore, after this, the invention
becomes public knowledge and state of the art. This is a very common pitfall which happens at
universities. After any of these events the invention will be no longer patentable as it became public
knowledge and therefore is not novel and you will no longer have its ownership. If you really have to
disclose an invention, think about protecting it first (either by a patent submission or signing a non-
disclosure agreement between parties).

b) Check if your invention is patentable: Submitting a patent is a somehow costly procedure, and
therefore we suggest that you do some investigations on your own to explore the patent landscape and
check if some person or company around the world already protected the same concept that you are
planning to. This is a very common procedure before submitting a patent request. There are several
free patent databases available that you can use to search using keywords related to your innovation.
Use them and check the output that comes out from your search requests to see if your concept is
already covered by any of the existing patents (and from whom). Below you find a list of some relevant
patent search engines that you can use for your searches:
• WIPO - Search International and National Patent Collections
• Espacenet – patent search

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has been supported by the EIT Health programme under the HEI Grant Agreement 1 of 2
 • Google Patents

c) Plan well when and what to patent: patenting is itself a tricky science. There are techniques and
strategies which should be established regarding IP protection. During this course we don’t aim that
you become an IP specialist as there are consultancy companies that can support you, but it is important
that you are aware of the following if you are thinking to protect your invention:

• In some fields of science (and business) IP protection is almost unavoidable (Biotechnology,

Pharmacy, Healthcare, etc.) and therefore must really be considered, while in other fields
(Telecommunication, electronics, etc.) the state-of-the-art changes in such a fast pace that IP
protection is almost irrelevant. See carefully if your innovation fits in any of this categories and plan
IP protection accordingly.
• IP protection is a somehow costly procedure (write the patent request, submit it, request
international extension to other relevant countries, reply to IP office notifications, etc.). Since you
submit the first patent request for protection the clock starts ticking and there is no way you can
stop it. Therefore, choose wisely the best timing to protect IP so that you can protect your innovation
and still have time to explore it commercially before IP management becomes too expensive.
• In some cases, some inventions make use of other third parties protected IP to achieve the desired
results. If this is the case, be careful. This means that you are using a piece of proprietary knowledge
from someone else to develop your invention. If this is the situation, contact the IP owners and
negotiate with them the conditions to use that proprietary knowledge.

220818 HIVE HEI Innovation for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship project

has been supported by the EIT Health programme under the HEI Grant Agreement 2 of 2