Research Funding, Patent Search Training and Technology Transfer: a collaboration

This paper will focus on the collaboration efforts of three different university departments to create, teach and evaluate the benefits of a joint patent training series, as well as the future directions this collaboration will take. KAUST has as one of its goals the diversification of the Saudi economy. There is a strong focus at the university on developing entrepreneurial ideas and commercializing research done. The University Library supports this goal through the provision of electronic resources and introductory patent search training skills. However, the patent training class offered by the University Library is only one step in a process that faculty and students need when starting or taking their research to the next level. In the Fall of 2015, I met with representatives of the two major stakeholders in the patent arena, the office of Sponsored Research (OSR) and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO), to develop a patent training program to meet the needs of researchers. The OSR provides funding to researchers who have demonstrated that their ideas have merit with potential applications, the TTO works with researchers who are at the point of needing IP protection. The resulting discussion led us to collaborate on creating a workshop series that benefit the researcher’s information needs and each of our departments as well. In the first of the series of three 2 hour workshops, the Manager of TTO and the Lead Integrative Specialist from the OSR presented a workshop on an overview of Intellectual Property and the patenting process. These presentations focused on when and how to determine whether research is potentially patentable, why a researcher needs to protect his/her research and how to go about protecting it. The second workshop focused on introductory patent search skills and tools, how to expand a literature search to include the information found in patents, and how this kind of research will improve not only the literature search but the research itself. This workshop was presented by me, representing the library, and an Integrative Specialist from the OSR. The third session builds on the first two by focusing in on how to evaluate a patent’s quality, how to read the patent to find the critical point(s) of the claim(s) being made, and free tools that will assist in evaluating the “intellectual space” around the claim(s) that will help focus and direct current and future research. This session is presented by another member of the TTO.