“2019 Knowledge Collection of the Project for Dispatching IP Strategy Designers to Universities - Toward Creation of Innovations from Unknown IP of Universities -” Released

Challenges that universities are facing in the field of intellectual property (IP) vary among the universities. Looking at universities’ divisions in charge of industry-academia collaboration, for example, they usually start providing IP support measures to researchers at the timing when such researchers achieve a certain level of research results and, at this stage, they finally request, by themselves, consultations on their inventions with the divisions. As seen in this example, it is not easy for many universities to comprehensively discover and ascertain internal research in advance and in providing IP support measures to researchers along with the progress of target research.

Case example 1 of the collection explains an effort for comprehensively analyzing information on research papers prepared by researchers belonging to the target university. This example shows that the effort resulted in helping the target university gain useful analysis results to: identify technological domains which may become the university’s strong points, ascertain research results which are expected to be implemented in society in the future, and discuss potential joint research partners for its researchers.

Case example 2 of the collection explains an effort, which was led by the target university’s division in charge of industry-academia collaboration, for centralization of information dispersing across the departments and divisions of the target university, e.g., information on competitive funds, national projects and joint research. This example shows that the effort resulted in helping the university to: identify unique research which is considered to make a strong social impact, design a strategy for filing patent applications and, furthermore, discover the potential of collaboration with young internal researchers.

The JPO hopes that many of the people committed to universities’ measures for supporting research or industry-academia collaboration efforts will refer to this collection and that this collection will help such people to: discover research results in universities, further develop research based on IP strategies and promote social implementation of research results.

1. Overview of the project

Since FY2019, the JPO has been dispatching “IP strategy designers” to universities. These designers will discover unknown IP of target universities and design future-oriented IP strategies for the universities from the research stage, e.g., plans on developing current research to joint research or on commercialization of research results, for the purpose of creating social value and economic value. This project aims to support universities in creating innovations as a source of their research outcomes by collaborating with personnel in charge of internal measures for supporting research or industry-academia collaboration.

2. Details of the collection

This collection focuses on universities’ approaches to solving their challenges by making use of support measures presented by IP strategy designers as experts in the field of IP and explains case examples by categorizing details of the examples into three parts: [i] problems and challenges that the target universities were facing before accepting IP strategy designers dispatched from the JPO, [ii] activities by IP strategy designers and [iii] results that the universities gained from the activities.

Key point 1: Easy-to-understand composition

The collection explains one case example per one page. One case example is composed of: a “Title” part in which readers are able to easily understand efforts tackled by IP strategy designers at a glance, a “Knowledge” part in which key points of efforts tackled by IP strategy designers and awareness gained through such efforts are summarized, and an “Overview of the case example” part in which readers are able to understand efforts tackled by IP strategy designers in a story-like style.

Key point 2: Easy-to-find information

The collection helps readers find desired case examples from two viewpoints: “problems and challenges that universities are facing” and “keywords,” so that readers are able to start reading any case example in which they are interested.

3. Announcement of the collection

• Link to the website on which the collection is posted (in Japanese)

Link to related information

• Website for the Project for Dispatching IP Strategy Designers to Universities (in Japanese)

Division in Charge

Policy Planning and Research Division, Policy Planning and Coordination Department, Japan Patent Office