The Office of Business Commercialisation and Engagement (BEC) provides a range of workshops and other skills development resources related to commercialisation, innovation and entrepreneurship, available to staff and students.

The Commercialisation and IP team within BEC is offering the following three seminars for the second half of 2022 (dates to be announced):

Intellectual Property and Tech Transfer 101

Introduction to technology transfer for professionals and students. If you’re new to the world of technology transfer (aka tech transfer) whether you’re a student or professional in admin or academia, you’re in the right place. This seminar is designed for you to learn the basics of tech transfer, gain context for the conversations you’re going to hear, and identify tangible ways you can begin to translate your ideas/research into commercial products and/or services. 

In its simplest form, technology transfer involves transferring the right to commercialise innovations that result from scientific research at ANU, to corporate entities that can make them into marketable products/services that can be made available to the public, and this seminar acts as a ‘guide’ to tech transfer for ANU creators.

Sections covered in this seminar include:

·         What is technology transfer?

·         The importance of prompt recognition, documentation and reporting of inventions

·         Protection of Intellectual Property (IP)

·         Commercialisation pathways

·         ANU’s IP Policy

Agreement and Grant IP Terms 101

Almost every type of agreement (including funding agreements associated with grants) contain Intellectual Property (IP) clauses. These IP clauses are not always straight-forward to read and understand. This seminar is designed to provide some helpful tips when reading IP clauses to equip you with the right knowledge to know (i) what the impact of those clauses have on you as an individual as well as on ANU as your host institution and (ii) the right questions to ask the other party when negotiating terms.

IP is an important asset, not only for ANU for but you as a researcher. You should take time to consider how you plan on using your IP/research (e.g. within a collaboration) and whether you would be happy assigning or licensing that IP/research to the other party (i.e. would you be happy never having access to use that IP/research data again?) Although IP clauses may not be a lengthy part of any agreement, it is important to ensure the clauses are drafted to reflect your needs.

Sections covered in this seminar include:

·         Category funding

·         Common agreement and grant types

·         Common IP language/terms in agreements 

·         Research services agreements and the importance of clearly defined deliverables

·         Case studies – the impact of different IP terms on researchers and their research

Software IP and Commercialisation 101

Commercialisation of software presents some unique challenges not typically found with physical intellectual property. This seminar has been prepared with the objective to clarify these challenges, in particular, appreciation of how software is built from components allowing re-use and sharing (e.g. open source software) and the specifics of licensing these components. Protection and commercialisation of software inventions is not as straight-forward as it used to be, and this seminar introduces the basic concepts and issues involved in this process.

In this seminar we will equip you with some tips on how to take your software idea to the next level, and how to set it up (i.e. develop it) in such a way, so that some of the common obstacles/roadblocks to commercialisation can be avoided. There is no easy answer on how to commercialise. In general, it’s a lot harder, takes a lot longer and costs a lot more money than expected. In this seminar we go through a range of ‘case studies’ to share some of the learnings of others who have taken the commercialisation path, so that you understand the steps (and potential pitfalls) involved in creating and launching a new software product. 

Sections covered in this seminar include:

·         Implications of open-source software (OSS)

·         Protection of software Intellectual Property (IP)

·         Things to consider when developing new software

·         Things to consider when releasing your software

·         Software business models/service models

·         Case studies – learnings from others in the commercialisation of their software

Dates for these seminars are yet to be confirmed. If you would like to join our seminar notification list, please email innovation@anu.edu.au with "Seminar Notification" in the subject line.

If you have any specific questions or have suggestions of topics you would like to see covered in our training, email innovation@anu.edu.au.