Ireland's National Public-Private Intellectual Property Guidelines

Lero-Industry collaborative research is typically conducted under contracts that are negotiated within the public sector IP guidelines generated by the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation in Ireland's (ACSTI) and the Irish Council for Science Technology and Innovation’s (ICSTI):

• ACSTI's National Code of Practice for Managing and Commercialising Intellectual Property from Public-Private Collaborative Research is available here (25 November 2005);

• ICSTI's National Code of Practice for Managing Intellectual Property from Publicly Funded Research is available here (07 April 2004).

How is intellectual property managed?

Companies who engage with Lero must be made aware of the need to publish. Every company Lero engages with will enter into a non-disclosure agreement. This obliges the researchers to be aware of confidentiality issues. Unless the company explicitly wishes to be named in a publication - if one of its staff is a joint-author for instance - then Lero researchers will ensure that neither the company’s name nor confidential details of their products or processes are made public. Drafts of publications are reviewed by the industry partners to ensure this.

Research that leads to a commercial result - a unique process or tool - requires a decision to be made concerning the intellectual property rights of the research. An intellectual property right is defined as: "The legal and beneficial title and interest in Intellectual Property". Decisions relating to how intellectual property rights are assigned to Lero and its industry partners will consider three factors: (1) financial input, (2) intellectual input and (3) capacity to exploit the intellectual property. It is important, during these negotiations, that Lero ensures that it retains sufficient rights to use and access project details for the purposes of research, while respecting all confidentiality agreements.

If Lero works with a company to enhance its product or improve its development process, the company will maintain its intellectual property and be protected by the non-disclosure agreement. It will also have the right to review any papers written based on their operation. However, if Lero uses one of its own inventions in the company - a novel process or utility - then Lero will retain the rights to its invention and will allow the company free use of it through a research license.