DIT announces radical policy change on patents

IRELAND'S LARGEST third-level institution has announced a radical policy change on ownership of research discoveries. Dublin Institute of Technology students or faculty who make discoveries will from now on retain full ownership of the resultant intellectual property.

The move runs counter to common national and international practice, DIT acknowledged in a statement issued yesterday.

And while key research funding body Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) welcomed any move that would encourage innovation, its director general said it would have to "examine the ramifications of this development".

The change was designed to help attract researchers to the institute, according to its president, Prof Brian Norton. "We need to develop entrepreneurship. This will help move barriers and contribute that," he said yesterday.

The policy was "unique in Ireland and most of Europe", Prof Norton said. It allowed the discoverer to retain full control of the IP provided three conditions were met: that the IP was not pre-assigned to a sponsor; that "substantial" DIT resources were not required to create it; and that it was not something requested by a manager in carrying out duties on behalf of DIT.

There were circumstances where the discoverer would not retain IP, Prof Norton added, but these "will be transparent" and clear from the start of any research project. "These will be up front and transparent from the beginning." The new policy also allows a generous return to a discoverer even where DIT retains IP rights. For example the inventor can receive up to 75 per cent of net revenue from a licence or equity sale in such circumstances.

Meanwhile, SFI and private sector partners will invest €16.4 million over the next five years in a research centre for the emerging "sensor web".

The Clarity initiative is partnership between University College Dublin and Dublin City University, supported by research at the Tyndall National Institute, Cork.

Ultimately, more than 90 researchers and other skilled staff will work at the centre which plans to graduate 45 PhD students.

The industry partners contributing €4.6 million in the form of personnel, funding, equipment, infrastructure and services are a mix of multinationals and indigenous firms. They include IBM, Vodafone, Ericsson, Foster-Miller, ChangingWorlds, Fidelity Investments and Critical Path.

The research will investigate the integration of sensor data from the physical world with sophisticated information process- ing and artificial intelligence techniques from computer science.

Two of the projects under way include the integration of wearable sensors into garmets to monitor the posture of back pain sufferers and the development of a network of sensors to monitor water pollution, according to Prof Barry Smyth, director of Clarity.

Clarity will become the ninth centre for science, engineering and technology established by SFI.