The Need for a Patent Favorable University Ecosystem

The Intellectual Property Cell, or Technology Transfer Department (TTO), is a one-stop shop for all IP-related matters at the university. It is responsible for providing dedicated patent prosecution support and technology transfer expertise. They also have the additional responsibility of creating awareness about patents and encouraging researchers to consider filing patents before publishing their research papers.

However, there is a challenge. Patent rights do not seem to be motivating enough for a researcher. Consequently, they have no interest in filing a patent application and prefer to publish their research instead. They require professional advice to decide whether to file a patent application for their new research. Most of the time, researchers are discouraged from filing patent applications due to a lack of expertise, low awareness, a lack of peer guidance, and inefficient processes.

Explainable AI (Artificial Intelligence) Accelerating the Patenting Activities

Interestingly, some of the top universities in India are now adopting AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies (XLSCOUT Novelty Checker) to democratize innovation and provide easy access to AI technologies to all the researchers via libraries so that they can use the AI platform themselves to compare their research to see whether it meets the three main criteria for getting a patent before approaching the IP department or attorney. Novelty Checker assists in conducting a novelty search to help you ensure that your innovation is unique. Additionally, it generates a novelty search report in 10 minutes with just a few clicks.

The advantages of the AI Platform (XLSCOUT) are:

• Easy-to-use platform: Anyone can access
• Gives a patentability search report in 5 mins (top 10 matching documents)
• It compares with both global patents and literature in real-time.
• Innovation triggers and dynamic industry focus reports help align research and innovate better.

The university libraries’ democratizing access to such innovation assistance platforms can help researchers understand their research while considering patents, keep a watch on industry trends and problems for research alignment, and get innovation triggers to generate more ideas.

Further, if you have any queries on this, feel free to contact us. We can also let you know how top universities are democratizing innovation and promoting patent culture.