Useful knowledge to realise the value of research results

2022-04-06

Learning about patent databases and how to search for patent information were some of the things
that doctoral student Arindam De Tarafder really appreciated about UU Innovation's credit-bearing
course on intellectual property in research. Photo: David Naylor.

Three questions to Arindam De Tarafder, PhD student in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology who took UU Innovation’s postgraduate course on intellectual property in research in the fall of 2021. A new round of the course is currently ongoing.

Why did you decide to register for the course?
“Entrepreneurship and innovation are two things that have always appealed to me. I would want my research to result in an actual real-life beneficial product. There is however a knowledge gap between academic research and the process of properly delivering/presenting the generated value. In my PhD curriculum, there is nothing that addresses this issue, and since this course promised to bridge this gap by providing information about intellectual property, patents and generating value from intellectual assets, I decided to take the course.”

What have you learned from the course? Any highlights?
“The most important thing I have learned from this course is how to identify and generate values from intellectual assets. The course provides insight into how one can develop, nurture and protect the research idea and turn it into an innovation that creates value. I also liked the lectures on patents and the exercises on ‘patent searches’. This was something new to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the task of extracting information from patent databases using different keywords and Boolean operators.”

Why would you recommend other researchers at Uppsala University to the this course?
“I would recommend this course because it gives a very nice overview of how one can commercialise their research. The course timings are such that they will not take away a huge amount of time from a researcher’s schedule. The lectures and assignments are well-coordinated and they are greatly beneficial to the overall goal.”

FACTS: The course Intellectual property in research: strategies and practices

The course runs twice a year and includes four half-day seminars. It's open to PhD students and researchers from all disciplinary domains at Uppsala University, and also from the universities of Gävle and Dalarna. For PhD students, the course provides 3 ECTS in their postgraduate education. The course is provided by UU Innovation in collaboration with the Swedish Patent and Registration Office, PRV.