Octrooirecht en octrooibeleid

Intellectual Property (IP) Rights are increasingly important in todays fast-moving, hyper-connected world. Awareness of the different types of IP is of vital importance, not only for lage companies and startups, but also for university researchers and even individuals. Knowing what Intellectual Property is, who owns it, how to protect it, how to trade it, and how to enforce an IP Rights is essential to ensure freedom of operation and keep imitators at bay. In addition to the fundamentals of IP Rights, IP Law and IP Policy are central topics of this course.

Whenever you create something, whether it is an invention, a book, a song, a painting of even a website, chances are that you will have to deal with Intellectual Property and the Rights that are associated with it. There are two sides of the medal: the IP Rights that you own and may have to enforce, and the IP Rights that are not yours and that you will have to deal with.

This course is intended for entrepreneurial engineers in every discipline, whether it be the hard sciences (quantum computing or nanobiology) or the more creative sciences (architecture of industrial design), especially when it concerns innovative products, processes, services and design. Given the increasing demands placed by society on companies and universities to innovate and improve life and society at large, IP rights have become synonymous with successful innovation and startups. Intellectual property rights also play a key role in todays scientific community. Understanding how the legal framework affects both the science and the companies in the business of creating high-tech and innovative solutions for todays problems, is of paramount importance.

In this course you will become familiar with the basics of European IP law and the most common types of IP law (including the requirements to obtain these rights). You will explore the process by which patents are granted, how patent rights can be exercised in court and how they can be used as a business tool. Modern-day IPR issues such as the patentability of computer-implemented inventions and biotech inventions will be addressed. Additionally, software protection (including open source) works and the related issues will be discussed. The topics will be presented on the basis of real-life cases. During the course, participants will analyze and present a case in which a university spin-off is confronted with a multitude of IP issues.