Practical Insights into Intellectual Property Strategy for a Technical Institute

The paper presents key issues of techno-legal management of intellectual property in a technical institute. It outlines strategies and processes, which may be adopted by the technical institute. It outlines strategies and processes, which may be adopted by the technical institute to generate and protect their intellectual properties through an effective policy formulation. Suggested startegies are process centric and focus on the intellectual output of human resource or results of collective intellectual labour of the institue. It also features management of generated intellectual property (IP) at each stage. It highlights rights and responsibilities of all the participants. A case study based on the activities undertaken by a Ph D student as a participant in the process is presented. With growing emphasis and importance of knowledge and IP in academic institutions, it is desirable to develop a comprehensive understanding of IP generated by students through interactions with teachers and develop appropriate guidelines to rationalize IP strategy in technical institutes. The interests of faculty, students and researchers as well as of the technical isntitute need to be delineated and balanced in order to provide a practical IP policy and management framework The technical institutes should also evolve requiaite guidelines for managing any IP produced by faculty, students or researchers and sharing of revenue from exploitation of such IP. It suggests a framework to guide IP policy and management in a technical institute. which may involve delineation of (i) Researcher's approach to IP strategy, (ii) institute's approach to IP strategy, and (iii) faculty guidance on student intellectual property rights. It indicates some select schemes, which the technical institutes can take advantage of for seeking support for developing IP management capacity.