Intellectual Property at MU
Glossary
Intellectual property (IP)
Any product or form of creation of one’s intellect that is new and unique. A specific type is an industrial property, the other group is copyright and related rights.
Acquirer
A subject (natural or artificial person), that acquires the rights to IP of MU based on an agreement signed with MU.
Author
The author is the natural person who has created the work. The author of a collection in its entirety is the natural person who has selected the components or arranged them in a creative manner.
Business secret
Commercial use of IP (Commercialization)
A financial valorization of IP of MU, e.g. by selling licenses, share of MU in spin-offs or by form of services using the IP of MU.
Costs of commercial use of IP
All costs related to valorization of the IP market potential (market survey, paychecks of external experts), costs related to IP protection (patent fees, paychecks of patent representatives), costs related to selling licenses (e.g. legal services), etc.
Employee work
Individual or collective author work that the author(s) created at the incentive and under the supervision of MU to fulfill the work duties coming from an employment relationship with MU.
Industrial design
Appearance of the product or its parts, including lines, shapes, colors, structure or material of the product itself (eventually its decoration).
Industrial property
Outcomes of intellectual activity that are new and industrially (economically) utilizable. This means inventions, technical solutions protected by utility model, industrial designs, topographies of semiconductor products, rationalization proposals, plant cultivars, biotechnological inventions of trademarks.
Invention
A technical solution that is novel, a result of inventive activity, that is industrially usable and protectable by patent or utility model. The following are not considered inventions: discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods, aesthetic creations, plans, rules and ways of performing intellectual activity, computer programs and information transfer. A patent cannot be awarded to plant and animal varieties, biological essential methods of animal breeding and plant cultivation, ways of surgical or therapeutic treatment, diagnostic methods used on human or animal bodies and inventions whose use would be against public order or morality.
Invention belonging to an enterprise
An invention created by the originator when fulfilling work tasks coming from a work contract or similar employment relationship with MU.
Know-how
A sum of knowledge, experience, skills and findings of producing, technical, operational, research, scientific or other nature that are not widely known or available. Also, they have to be substantial, describable (they exist in objectively perceivable form) and commercially usable.
License
The right to use protected technologies or know-how. Thanks to adjustable conditions, it is a flexible and often used tool for providing IP rights. The most important parameters of license agreements are exclusivity, defining territories, financial compensation (fixed fees, share of sales), period of protection and possibilities of signing sub-license agreements.
Originator
Any natural person employed by MU or in other employment relationship with MU that participated in the creation of the subject of the IP.
Patent
A form of protection of an invention. The patent holder has an exclusive right to use the protected invention, to provide agreement to use the invention to other persons (e.g. by license), or to transfer the patent to other person. The invention for that has been a patent awarded cannot be manufactured, offered for sale or used by a third party for industrial/commercial purpose without the consent of the patent holder.
Rationalisation proposal
A rationalisation proposal shall be any technical improvement of a manufacturing or operational nature and any solution to a problem of safety, protection of health at work or protection of the environment the rationalisator shall have the right to dispose of his proposal.
School work
An (author) work that a MU student (or a lifelong education participant) created to fulfill his studying duties.
Spin-off (also Spin-out)
A company founded for the purpose of utilization and development of the IP of the university towards the form of marketable product or service. The IP (usually a research outcome) is provided to the company by license agreement or sale. MU can (but needn’t) to gain a property share in the spin-off, the company can agree with the university on using its labs or services. The originators of the IP usually participate in running the company. Usually these are small and medium-sized companies that do not have enough means to realize their own investment intents, therefore they offer the possibility of investor participation.
Trademark
Trading with IP subjects
Especially commercial provision of licenses to IP of MU. Not the cases of one-time sale.
Utility model
A form of protection for technical solutions those are new, beyond the frame of simple skill and are industrially usable. It is a lower form of protection than a patent.
Work (as subject of copyright)
A literary work or other work of art or a scientific work which are the unique outcome of the creative activity of the author and are expressed in any objectively perceivable manner including electronic form, permanent or temporary, irrespective of their scope, purpose or significance A work shall be namely a literary work expressed by speech or in writing, a musical work, a dramatic work or dramatico-musical work, a choreographic work and pantomimic work, a photographic work, an audiovisual work, a work of fine arts like a painting, graphic or sculptural work, an architectonic work including a town-planning work, a work of applied art, cartographic work, computer program, a work which is the outcome of the creative adaptation of another work, including its translation into another language, a collection or a database.