Intellectual and industrial property at the URL

One of the objectives of the ORI is to raise awareness in the university environment about the importance of creating, protecting and transferring the knowledge generated in the university and, in particular, to inform the URL research community of the need to take the appropriate steps, and in the right order, to optimise the efforts invested in carrying out research.

With that in mind, the following video offers some basics to keep in mind when protecting, publishing, and transferring results.

Intellectual property

In the Intellectual property field, it should be borne in mind that:

  • There are copyrights and exploitation rights, and in each case it is necessary to know who holds those rights.
  • There are several ways to record the authorship of a work. One option is to go to the Intellectual Property Registry of Catalonia.
  • The exploitation rights of a work are linked to its copyright. The © symbol associated with a name indicates the ownership of exploitation rights (although its use is not mandatory).
  • The section on Open Science sets out the main concepts to be considered when publishing openly with “Creative Commons” licenses.

Industrial property

In the Industrial property field, it should be borne in mind that:

  • There are different industrial property titles (patents, utility models, trademarks, etc.) and it is important to be aware in each case of the most appropriate option for protecting knowledge or technology.
  • Patents are intangible assets that allow  technology to be transferred to other entities and to partially recover research investments.
  • Published patents of the University can be found on the websites of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office.

Protecting research results is always a preliminary and necessary step for possible marketing. At the URL's ORIs we provide advice and guidance to help you find the best protection mechanism and offer support when managing the application or the relevant protection register.