Collaboration

Single access point

The SME engagement session involved lively and stimulating descriptions of three different styles of engagement, from three different sorts of organisation, from three different countries. Aston University's system is strongly embedded into the procedures, with relevant KPIs for all, driven from the top down by a highly motivated, ex-industry, Vice Chancellor.

Sue kicked off the session and talked us through the various soft IP rights that can exist, including copyright, trade marks, designs, goodwill etc. and put this in context by describing the inter-relationship of these rights using the Glastonbury Festival as an example. The session aimed to communicate that IP has many facets and a lot of the rights inter-relate. However it is vital that there is awareness of the rights both so they can be used and the problems that third party rights could present if there is lack of awareness of Soft IP and its value.

On a glorious afternoon, a group of us were fortunate to visit the IBM site in Dublin. We started our visit in the IBM Innovation Centre, hearing form our host Noel Crawford about the history of the site, and how it has developed from a manufacturing facility to the technology campus it is today.

Sometimes it is good to go back to basics. In the conference’s opening plenary David Bott challenged some fundamental assumptions about how linear the relationship is between the type of world class science for which the UK is rightly applauded and the derivation of innovative products and services from such innovation – an area where he believes the evidence for our world class standing is perhaps less compelling.

In this talk, Professor Reid explored why there has been such a focus in recent years on reviewing university-business collaborations. The talk included:

A movement took hold in academia at the dawn of the 20^th century. It spread its wings, exploded twice, then emerged into the technological civilisation we inhabit. This movement today we call ‘impact’ is underpinned by a fundamental motive – in return for funding and support, research conducted at universities should provide positive benefit to society.

Probably the most effective means to this end is by taking ideas cultivated in academia and incorporating them into the development of technologies which can enhance health, wellbeing, the environment and economy.

Intellectual property are knowledge assets that both universities and business create, but to own and manage these assets they require legal rights.

When most people think of IP they think of the rights that attribute ownership rather than of the knowledge content of the asset. Intellectual property rights typically take the form of a document, such as patents or copyrights, that describes the knowledge content and attributes ownership of the asset.