Universities are knowledge houses for students. These academic institutions offer both infrastructural and intellectual facilities to aid in research and development. The interesting fact is that they focus more on publishing research in journals than protecting it under patents. This is because the researchers are more comfortable publishing research papers than filing patents. Also, research publications are already a well-established method of increasing researchers’ visibility in the academic community. Moreover, it is considered more academically rewarding to have a research publication and contribute to the increasing knowledge of humanity.
Most researchers are in a hurry to file research publications as they believe in the “publish or perish” culture. Researchers would choose to publish a paper as it is much quicker to publish and much easier to write. Further, in India, for academics, the university/college management has fixed “Journal Publication” as a yearly target for self-appraisal and all.
These days, we have started to see a change in the mindset of academic institutions toward filing patents rather than only focusing on research publications. These academic institutions have started realizing that patent filing can be more rewarding commercially and can also give them more credibility in the global space.
This shift in focus on patents will pave the way for educational institutions in India to become financially independent and highly profitable businesses. Patents will assist universities in improving their rankings and creating an ecosystem for innovation. Furthermore, they will also incubate knowledge-based start-ups, generate additional income, and monitor research activity.
As the idea of protecting intellectual property has gained popularity, various governments are encouraging their universities to file patents for their inventions.
The challenges of becoming an effective patent filing university are:
- The need for IP infrastructure and a high budget
- The need for a large team of IP experts (internal or external)
- Knowledge transfer to make students or professors aware of patent benefits over research papers
- Efficient Innovation for the IP Process
These obstacles for visionary universities can now be overcome by implementing AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools such as XLSCOUT Novelty Checker, which has already been adopted in top university libraries. Here, one can enter their ideas and have those ideas compared and evaluated against millions of patents and research publications instantly. It assists in conducting a novelty search to help you ensure that your innovation is unique.
Additionally, it generates a professional, automated novelty search report that can be presented to the internal intellectual property department or hired attorneys in order to take ideas forward for the patenting process.
Where Novelty Checker helps:
- Students /Professors can themselves assess the patentability of their ideas
- Triggers for Innovation: Generate New Ideas
- Automated Patentability Search Report: Indicator of your idea’s uniqueness
- Research alignment to industry and market requirements
- Patenting culture and democratization of innovation
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.
