As a university, we seek to pioneer innovative, world-changing research and projects which impact our communities and societies. Ideas which start as funded research activities, may grow to develop real-world applications or commercial opportunities. Our ambition is to support staff to pursue innovative ideas and identify opportunities for creating spinout companies.
Protecting Intellectual Property
If you are involved in research activity, developing new teaching and learning concepts or coming up with innovative ideas based on your subject area, you will be creating intellectual property. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group’s role is to identify, protect and licence that intellectual property in a way that creates the most valuable impact in society.
We work with you to help safeguard your ideas and inventions through methods which may include copyrights, trademarks, patents or trade secrets. If you work for the university and come up with the idea as part of your contracted role, you will need to work with our team to ensure you follow the intellectual property process.
Registering Inventions Disclosures
The first step if you come up with an idea is to register it as an invention disclosure. You fill in a set form as soon as possible so there is a captured record of your idea and to avoid any conflict of interest. You should speak with a colleague from the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group about the commercial potential of your idea before submitting abstracts, articles or manuscripts for any publication or presentation to avoid any risk to your intellectual property rights.
Facilitating Company Spinouts
Where your idea has commercial opportunity, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group will be able to support you to spinout into a company and develop licence agreements for your intellectual property. This process is outlined in the Intellectual Property Commercialisation Policy which acts as a framework to incentivise staff and academic schools to engage in highlighting potentially valuable intellectual property.
Supporting Spinout Governance
Our team will continue to work together and support spinouts with management of intellectual property, legal processes, and governance. This may include liaising with lawyers, reviewing agreements, or attending spinout board meetings. In addition, like all startup companies we will support the founders in developing their business model and offer training and mentorship.
If you want to know more about being a spinout, or want to register an invention disclosure, get in touch with our team at innovation@rgu.ac.uk or book a consultation.