NIFK14020U Intellectual Property Rights: Strategy and Management

How do firms ensure growth? How do new entrepreneurs secure that they benefit from their novel ideas? And how do scientists at universities ensure a transformation of scientific results into commercial business? One core element in answering these three questions is intellectual property rights (IPR). IPR is not only an important business opportunity for large multinational corporations but should also be considered by SMEs, entrepreneurs and scientists. Work with IPR  involve assessing risks, market structures, competitor positioning, and defining how to organize oneself in this landscape and deciding how to go forward and shape business by exchanging IP with other stakeholders in the market.

This course has two main agendas to ensure that students are well equipped in understanding IP:  IP strategizing and IP dealing. IP strategizing is about how to develop, map and implement an Intellectual property strategy (hereafter IP-strategy), essentially demonstrating how managers, entrepreneurs and scientists can support reaching their commercial goals with the use of IP rights (e.g. patents, designs, copyrights, trademarks) in combination with know-how and trade secrets – and showing how the business can grow by using the supporting instruments the IP regime offers. IP dealing is about how IP rights are exchanged between stakeholders, and the challenges, costs and benefits individuals or firms face. IP dealing can be conducted in a myriad of ways – where the more common approaches are in-, out- and cross-licensing, sales, open access, royalty agreements or by the use of IP brokers, each approach entails different considerations. In this course participants will therefore be taught and trained in the core elements of exchanging IP, not only how to identify potential beneficiary ways of dealing with IP but also by participating in fictitious IP negotiation cases to get as close to real life experience in IP negotiation as possible.

The course will take departure in IP strategy seen from a general perspective, however, focus will also turn on aspects which only pertains for firms belonging to selected industries. The industry specific elements will be based on students’ area of interest. For example for students with an interest in in agriculture, environment or natural resources cases and assignments will be within this area, whereas student with interest in life science and biotech will have assignments within their particular interest area. In addition, the course includes introduction to instruments (search engines) wherein IP rights can be identified and the students will be trained in navigating in IP-databases as sources for knowledge.

The instruments and search engines introduced during the course will also serve as tools for solving assignments continuously during the course. Assignments are topic specific; however, the students will have the opportunity to apply the assignment in the setting wanted. In this way, students with particular interests in a particular business, maybe even bringing an own business ideas to the table, will have the opportunity to scrutinize the IP situation of this particular industry, firm or innovation in detail.

In essence this course helps students to develop an applied approach to how scientists, entrepreneurs, and companies navigate in this complex business area, where strategy, innovation, intellectual property rights and know-how meet.

This course can be seen as an add-on for the students that has taken one of the more patent technical courses offered at KU.