See also
Find out more about the European Patent Academy and its promotion and support of training and education related to the EPO.
ip4inno
Training the trainers
Every
day business advisors, TTOs and other intermediaries come into contact with
innovative people who want to commercialise their new ideas. To equip them with
the necessary knowledge about IP and related commercialisation issues, the
European Commission, the EPO and 18 other institutions have come together to
develop a range of IP strategy teaching materials to be used in a "train
the trainers" philosophy.
The materials
In the first step, twelve 3-hour modules were created comprising
- PowerPoint slides,
- teaching notes,
- case studies and
- workshop exercises.
They are now being extended to twenty modules (a total of over 50 teaching hours), to cover topics such as IP licensing, IP valuation and financing, open innovation, IP enforcement and patent information.
All of the training material has been written by experts from national patent offices, commercial law firms, business advice centres, innovation support agencies and universities.
Languages
The original materials were developed in English, but some of them have already been translated into other languages, with more translations being created every month.
Using the materials
Many of the project materials are openly available from the project website. The teaching modules, however, are on a part of the website accessible only to registered users. Registration is free, and users are encouraged to adapt, customise or translate the modules, on condition that they respect a few rules:
- any trainings they offer using the material must be operated "not-for-profit"
- copies of any adaptations or translations of the material should be supplied back to the EPO for uploading to the project website
- the material remain on the ip4inno branded PowerPoint template at all times.
Registration
Registration for access to the modules comes automatically to participants at ip4inno workshops run regularly by the EPO or other partners. Business advisors wishing to use the modules but who are unable to attend a training can make a request to the Innovation Support Unit of the European Patent Academy by e-mail.