Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in a Changing Landscape of University-Industry Collaborations

Abstract

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are at the heart of each university-industry collaboration. As such, ownership of IPR resulting from the collaboration and open public dissemination of project results are important issues. As university-industry collaborations are evolving from the unilateral (“transfer”) type towards bilateral (“exchange”) types of knowledge transfer, the practical elaboration of these issues is challenging. In this paper we analyse and discuss potential conflicts of interest related to IPR occurring in a broad range of university-industry collaborations.

Keywords: Intellectual property rights, IPR, university-industry, transfer, exchange