IP Intelligence
Written For Your Situation
The same law reads differently to a founder, an engineer, a researcher and an enterprise IP team.
Student
IP for students and researchers
Publish or file? Both, usually. But the order matters more than almost anything else you will do.
Can a thesis destroy the novelty of your own invention?
Yes, if the public could obtain and read it before your priority date. A thesis in an open institutional repository is a publication from the day it goes up.
Presenting at a conference before you file
Almost always yes. The narrow learned-society limb of section 31 does not cover ordinary academic or industry conferences, and posters, abstracts and slides are all …
Publish and patent, in the right order
No. You have to sequence them. File first, publish second - and the gap can be days, not years.
The PhD thesis timeline, and where the IP decision fits
Usually at repository deposit, which can be weeks after acceptance and months before any journal article. That deposit date is the one that matters.
Who owns an invention made at a university?
Whatever the institutional IP policy, the employment or enrolment terms, and the funding agreement say together - read all three, because the answer is rarely in one…
Inventorship is not authorship
No. Authorship recognises contribution to a publication; inventorship is a factual question about who devised the claimed invention. They routinely produce different…
Research data and what it does for a patent
Enough to make the asserted effect credible and, in chemistry and life sciences, enough to answer the specific comparisons that sections 3(d) and 3(e) require.
Spinning a company out of university research
The rights have to move from the individuals and the institution into the company, in writing and recorded - and that is usually the slowest part of the whole proces…
Preprints, repositories and accepted manuscripts
For patent purposes it is. A preprint on a public server is available to the public from the moment it is posted, and that date is the one that counts.
Working with a technology transfer office
An invention disclosure with technical substance, before anything becomes public - and honest answers about who contributed and what has already been shown to whom.
The paper is already published. Is anything left?
Not necessarily. Two questions decide it: what the publication actually enabled, and which countries still matter.
Not sure whether this applies to your invention?
The honest answer usually needs someone to look at your actual disclosure, your timeline and the prior art. That is a conversation, not an article.
Educational guidance, not legal advice. This material is published by Ragulika IP for general education and information. It is not legal advice, it does not create a professional-client relationship, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own facts. Patentability, infringement, prosecution strategy and every other IP outcome turn on the specific facts and on the law and Patent Office practice as they stand at the time you act. Please take professional advice before making a decision, and read the underlying provision or judgment before relying on any point stated here.