In this section an introduction to the process of technology commercialization at the Nencki Institute is provided. This section will be developed according to the development of this kind of activity at the Nencki Institute.

 

The first step to initiate the procedure of protection and commercialization of inventions at the Nencki Institute is triggered by submitting the Invention Disclosure Form. It is a short form in which all necessary information about a potential invention should be provided. According to §6 point 1 of the Intellectual Property Policy at the Nencki Institute, an inventor has 14 days to disclose the invention to the Director of the Institute (or other authorized person), if the invention was created eg. as a result of scientific work performed at the Institute. It is advised to ask for consultation at the Office of International Cooperation and Project Management (OICPM) before submitting the Invention Disclosure Form.

 

The next step is initial verification of the commercial potential of an invention, which is being performed by the OICPM staff. Based on this evaluation, the Director has one month to make a decision, whether an invention will be protected. Protection can be provided by a patent application or by ensuring confidentiality of the invention (keeping it as a know-how). If the Director decides not to protect the invention, the inventor can apply to be transferred full rights to it.

 

According to the Policy, the inventor is responsible not to disclose the invention to unauthorized persons as long as it is needed for the commercialization purposes.

 

If it is decided to protect the invention as a patent, the next step is establishing a contact with the patent attorney. Depending on the type of invention and its potential, contact with different patent attorneys can be established. An important element of this step is checking the prior art, with special emphasis on similar inventions, which can be possibly in conflict with Institute’s invention. However, sometimes it can be decided to skip this step and to rely on the research that is done by the Patent Office after submission of the patent application.

During its preparation a strict cooperation between the inventor (or inventors) and the patent attorney is needed. The patent application consists of a few parts. These are among others: description of the prior art, description of the invention and patent claims. The descriptive part is similar to an ordinary scientific publication. The most important part of the application are however patent claims. The invention will be protected only to the extent described in this part of the patent application.

 

The next step in the process (after submitting a patent application or making an invention a confidential konw-how) is creation of the plan of technology commercialization. This step is performed by the OICPM, if possible with cooperation with the inventor. The technology commercialization plan should provide an introduction to eventual future business plan for the technology and should contain a brief analysis of all importnat strategic possibilities and environmental circumstances related to implementation of the technology.

 

Following this step, external partners for the commercialization process will be sought after.

 

Analogical procedure can be implemented to technologies that are not inventions (eg. utility designs, computer programmes, etc).

 

According to the Policy, possible income generated by technology commercialization would be divided as follows:

 

-50% for inventor(s) (if there are more inventors, this part is divided among them according to their relative participation in the final invention)

-50% for the Nencki Institute