UNamur / Research / Technology Transfer

Intellectual Property

Original ideas and creations might have commercial value in the same way as commodities do. IP rights, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, designs, models, and know-how, establish and protect the ownership of ideas and their potential applications.

Coaching

The TTO is there to answer any questions regarding IP and to provide support in patent and trademark filings, as well as knowledge transfers.

IP regulation at FUNDP

FUNDP adopted a new Regulation on Intellectual Property (.pdf). This Regulation aims at framing the protection of research results and aiding technology transfer, while preserving fundamentals such as the freedom to publish or the right to be named as an inventor in a patent. The Regulation also emphasizes FUNDP’s involvement in technology transfer by binding it to provide rapid answers to requests by researchers. Finally, according to practice within French-speaking universities, the Regulation sets down the repartition of revenues from technology transfer in equal shares between FUNDP, the laboratory and the researchers.

Selected information on IP

Patents

Patents protect technical and functional aspects of products and processes (manufacturing, methods of use…).

Copyrights

Copyrights protect creations, such as literary and artistic works, computer programs, databases and multimedia against unauthorized copying.

Know-How

In planning technology transfer, it may be decided not to file a patent application and to keep the invention secret, for instance when not wanting to incur the costs of patent filing or when the patent publication would divulge an innovation. This “secret” is based on know-how.

Know-how can be defined as a set of technical knowledge which can be passed on but are not obvious and/or not yet patentable. This kind of protection can be useful for optimization steps or manufacturing processes.