Disclosures and IP
Disclosures
Strategiize
Flinders Partners use their internally developed opportunity management software Strategiize to help manage the disclosure of new IP. If you are a researcher at Flinders and would like to disclose your IP to Flinders Partners, simply login into Strategiize and use the “New Project Wizard” to enter the details of your project. If you cannot answer all of the questions that’s fine; just enter what you can and a member from the FP team will be in contact with you shortly to go through any questions that you may have had trouble with.
If you have any technical difficulties when entering your project, please contact Ben Flink on extension 17748.
For more information about Strategiize and entering new projects into the Wizard, please see our User Guide.
Forms
IP and Commercialisation
When it comes to commercialisation, you may be surprised to learn that it’s not all about the IP. Business opportunities can exist without IP, so long as unique commercial benefits are on offer. As such, Flinders Partners is interested in hearing not only from those researchers who have traditional IP to commercialise, but also those researchers who have interesting ideas which provide real world benefits, but who may not yet have any IP to sell.
CleverMe is a great example of a project that was born without any initial IP. To learn more about this project, please click here.
IP Management
Intellectual property (IP) represents the property of one’s mind or intellect, which can be held in inventions, literary works, names symbols, images and designs, and secret know-how.
With the exception of copyright and circuit layout rights, which are automatic, you can take formal steps to register your IP and obtain the legal rights of ownership. The benefit in doing this is that it may help give you as an inventor or an investor the ability to reap economic reward. IP rights are assets which can be bought, sold or licensed like any other property.
Managing IP can be complicated; we suggest that you seek the advice of Flinders Partners to plan the best strategy for protecting and realising the value of your intellectual property. We can work you and any industry partners that you may have to determine the most appropriate form of IP protection to best capture the competitive strengths of the research outcome.
In many instances early disclosure to Flinders Partners is critical to secure protection for it. It is very important that staff and students do not publicly disclose any intellectual property without first speaking to Flinders Partners. Once an idea is released into the public domain it can no longer be legally protected.
Types of IP
The most common forms of intellectual property protection considered by Flinders Partners are:
- Patents – the protection of new or improved products, processes or methods
- IP Rights – specifically trade secrets and confidentiality/non-disclosure agreements
- Trade Marks – the protection of letters, words, signatures, numerals, brands, aspects of packaging, shapes, colours, sounds or scents, names, phrases, logos used to distinguish goods or services of one trader from another
- Registered Designs - the protection of the shape or appearance of a manufactured product
For more information about IP, you may wish to consult one of the websites below:
Student IP
It is important for researchers to understand the university's position on the ownership of IP created by students. If a student has been involved in the creation of IP which appears likely to be suitable for commercialisation, the University has a procedure by which the student IP is assigned to the University.
For more information, consult Clause 8 of the IP policy and Item 4 of the Guidelines.