Intellectual Property Management: Assessing Stakeholder Knowledge Regarding Obtaining Valid Patent Rights

Intellectual Property Management encompasses creation, protection, and exploitation of intellectual property rights (IPRs) such as patents that play a critical role in research and development of intensive industries. Patent rights are known to provide significant benefits as they can be sold or licensed and form foundation for making, using, and selling industry-leading products, processes, and services. In order to obtain valid patent rights, however, basic knowledge of certain critical issues is considered essential among stakeholders. The authors assessed the basic knowledge of proper record keeping practices, ownership, and public disclosure among public and private sector organizations of various sizes across Canada in a variety of industries. They found that respondents had good knowledge of proper record keeping practices, assigning ownership of patent rights to the employers, and excellent knowledge of what constitutes a public disclosure. However, they had poor knowledge of what does not constitute a public disclosure and duration of the public disclosure grace period. The authors provided recommendations for implementing organizational processes for further educating stakeholders in obtaining valid patent rights for commercialization