Your government-funded research at a university lab has produced results, published in a peer-reviewed journal, that have great potential for commercial application. A for-profit corporation requests a copy of your data, saying that they want this for use in their own research, and they have no intention of commercializing your results. You strongly believe that the potential for commercial application is compelling and unavoidable. How should you proceed?
RESOURCES & PUBLICATIONS
Sharing Data
Unless key features have not been disclosed in the publication, it is therfore too late for any patent protection. Most likely the key features that could have been protected, can be derived from the publication itself. Any public disclosure of data/results negates any chance of patent protection - even abstracts. That is why patent application must be filed before any public disclosure of data and results.
One of the reasons the
Sharing data with a for profit corp
Consult your Tech Transfer
The power of a medium
The power of a medium for-profit organization to write an Intellectual property on a certain subject can be 20 patents a month. So, the data shared can just contribute to give the right direction and exclude your means to write a future IP on that subject. In other hands, if you use their data: Some for profit organization has a principle to sue any intellectual property coming from labs which there was a cooperation involved, as a matter to assure that has not misusage of their material/data or loss of profit.
I would not share any sensitive data with any organization when I would have intentions to get one IP on that.
I agree
The researcher isn't the only interested party here; her university also has a stake in this decision. The first step should be to confer with the appropriate office. Unless the researcher and the university agree that pursuing a patent or other intellectual property protection/exploitation is a waste of time, the data should not be shared.
Ken Pimple
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