2. How is intellectual property protected?
Generally, by federal patent law, federal copyright law, federal trademark law, state trademark law, state laws regarding trade secrets and other laws related to businesses and contracts

3. Who owns the intellectual property created at NCSU?
If the intellectual property was developed by an employee of NCSU or invented at NCSU facilities under the supervision of NCSU personnel, the intellectual property is owned by NCSU. Each inventor must assign his or her rights in the intellectual property to NCSU. This includes all faculty, staff, fellows, and graduate students who have an appointment at NCSU.

4. When should intellectual property be disclosed to the University?
Intellectual property should be disclosed to the Office of Technology Transfer early in the development process. Disclosure to the OTT should be made before any public disclosure (oral or written) of the information is made. In this way, an informed evaluation can be completed for the potential invention and an appropriate protection and marketing strategy developed.

5. Why should intellectual property be disclosed prior to public disclosure?
After you publish, present or otherwise publicly disclose your invention, you have one year from the first disclosure date to file a U.S. patent. After this anniversary has passed, you may lose all US patent rights. No grace period exists for foreign patent applications. With very few exceptions, all foreign patent rights will be irrevocably lost once your invention is publicly disclosed.

6. Why is protection of intellectual property important?
Intellectual property is an asset to be developed, maintained and protected, not unlike land, equipment and facilities. By protecting it appropriately, it can return value and advantages to its owner and the inventive group.

7. Who is an inventor?
Inventorship is specifically defined under US law. An inventor is a person who makes an original, significant intellectual contribution leading to the conception of the invention. This concept is significantly different from authorship on an academic publication.

8. How should an invention be disclosed?
Inventions are disclosed by submitting an invention disclosure form (that can be found on the forms page) to the OTT.

9. After disclosure what happens?
The disclosure is then evaluated by the appropriate OTT staff, after which it is scheduled for review at the next meeting of the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC). The IPC recommends any actions taken regarding intellectual property to the Vice-Chancellor for Research and the OTT.

10.What is a patent?
A patent is a legal monopoly that prevents others from making, using, or selling an invention covered by the patent. Patents are granted by governments. Generally, patents may be enforced only in the jurisdiction that has granted them.

11. What is patentable?
For the standard type of patent, called a utility patent, an invention must be either an apparatus, a composition of matter, a process, or an article of manufacture (i.e. an artificial, man-made thing rather than an unprocessed, natural object or material). An improved version of previous technology may be patentable, as well as a new use for an existing technology. To be patentable, the invention or discovery must possess:

Utility: The patent statute specifies that an invention must be useful; i.e., it has a real-world application.

Novelty: The patent must be new, i.e., the exact same thing must not have existed or been done before.

Non-Obviousness: Even if novel, the invention must also be different enough from past technology that the average worker in the field would not have come up with the new invention from what was already known. If the invention does not meet this test, it may be rejected as obvious. Remember that the average worker in many scientific fields may be a Ph.D. researcher. In order to meet this requirement, inventors need to be aware of issues related to prior art, barring events, and bar dates.

There are other legal requirements for patentability that relate to the kind and amount of description, language and supporting data that must be present in the patent application itself. If you have questions about these other requirements, please contact someone in OTT.

12.What is prior art?
Prior art is any relevant publication, patent, or event prior to invention that may be considered by the patent office in evaluating patentability of the invention. If a patent application is filed in the US, anything that has been published, used in public, offered for sale or sold by anyone before the inventor(s) made the invention, or more than one year before the application is filed, becomes a part of the prior art for that application.

13. What is a barring event?
The publication, use, offer for sale or sale of an invention anywhere in the world is known as a barring event, because if a year passes between one of these events and the date when a patent application is filed on the invention, the inventor is barred from patenting the invention in the US As explained above, a barring event may and often will immediately preclude NCSU or the inventor from seeking patent protection in a country other than the United States.

14.Who prosecutes patents on behalf of NCSU?
Outside patent counsel (a patent attorney or patent agent) is assigned by the NCSU Office of Technology Transfer. Usually, patent counsel selected for prosecuting applications on NCSU's behalf have advanced scientific degrees in addition to valuable experience in prosecuting patent applications in the scientific field.

15. Does NCSU file international patents on inventions?
Although international patent prosecution is extremely expensive, NCSU does file international patents on some inventions, depending on the level of licensing interest, the overall market size and the potential market share for the technology.

16. What is a provisional patent application?
The provisional patent application is an application that can be filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that establishes the effective filing date of a patent application. The provisional application is not examined by the USPTO, and may remain pending for one year. At the end of the period, NCSU must elect to either drop the filing and allow the information to become public or convert the provisional application to a regular patent application. In the case NCSU, the OTT will work with the inventors to make this decision on behalf of NCSU.

17. Who pays for the patent application?
NCSU pays for all costs associated with the preparation, prosecution, and maintenance of the patent. NCSU seeks reimbursement of patent costs through licensing.

18. What if a collaborator from another institution has contributed to my invention?
NCSU has interinstitutional agreements with many universities, research institutions and other organizations, and may negotiate such an agreement with your collaborator or institution. This type of agreement determines which institution would take the lead in patent and licensing of the invention, as well as how any royalty income would be shared. Each inventor should separately disclose the invention to his or her home institution.

19. What can be disclosed to the public or to a company before a patent application is filed?
In the absence of a signed and valid confidentiality agreement (see below) or a filed patent application, it is generally not a good idea to make any kind of public disclosure of your potential invention if you believe that the disclosure contains any patentable aspects. What constitutes a public disclosure depends greatly upon the circumstances under which the information is being disclosed and the nature of the disclosure. Accordingly, it is strongly advisable for you to discuss a pending disclosure (including a publication submission, a presentation of a poster, paper or abstract at a meeting, or meeting with a company) prior to the disclosure with someone in OTT.

20. What is a confidentiality agreement?
A confidentiality agreement is an agreement whereby one party agrees to hold the proprietary technical and/or business information of the other party in confidence. Confidentiality Agreements (CDAs) or Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs) are a standard tool of the trade, and many companies are amenable to having access to a technology under the terms of this type of agreement. To review NCSU's standard agreement language please go to the Forms page on the OTT web site.

21. Who can sign a confidentiality agreement?
Only authorized individuals can sign a CDA on behalf of NCSU. PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SIGN THIS AGREEMENT ON BEHALF OF NCSU. If a company wishes to obtain confidential information from NCSU, the investigator should contact the OTT.

22. What is a license?
Generally speaking, a license is a legally binding written document in which one party, having definable rights in a property, transfers or grants all or some part of those rights to another entity for some type of consideration.

23. Does NCSU sell intellectual property rights to third parties?
Generally not. Rights are granted to a third party on either an exclusive or non-exclusive basis to manufacture, have manufactured, and/or sell or use the technology to create products or processes. Licenses are granted such that the intellectual property must be returned to The University if the third party fails to fully develop and commercialize the rights granted. A sale of technology generally means there is no provision for return.

25. What kind of financial terms are included in a license agreement?
The financial terms of a license agreement can vary greatly. They may include, but are not limited to, up-front fees, license reissue fees, minimum annual royalties, milestone payments, royalties and equity. Financial terms are widely variant and are tailored to fit the specific nature of each technology and each license transaction.

26. Can equity be included in a license?
Equity may be transferred to The University in a license transaction as partial or sometimes total compensation for the rights conveyed. Typically, equity plays an important part in licensing to a start-up company.

27. Who signs license agreements?
The Vice-Chancellor for Research is NCSU's representative authorized on behalf of the university. The Office of Legal Affairs and OTT staff provide reviews to ensure compliance with university policies.

28. What happens if an inventor leaves NCSU or dies?
If an inventor leaves NCSU, the inventor is still entitled to the inventor's personal share of license revenue disbursement. If an inventor dies, the inventor's share of license revenue is disbursed to the inventor's heirs

29. What is a copyright?
A copyright is the grant of protection by the laws of the United States to the authors of 'original works' including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, architectural and certain other intellectual works, and is available for both published and unpublished works. An owner has the exclusive right to authorize others to reproduce the work; create derivative works;
distribute copies of the work; perform the copyrighted work publicly, display the work publicly, and if it is a sound recording, perform the work publicly. Software may be copyrighted, but may also, in certain circumstances, be protected by a patent.

30. How do you file for copyright protection?
Copyright protection automatically exists from the moment of creation, and a work is created when it is fixed in a tangible form. Therefore, no publication or registration or other action by the Copyright Office is required to secure a copyright, although certain advantages are retained for registered copyrights, such as the right to seek damages for copyright infringement.
For further information on copyright, please visit the Administrative Regulation on Copyright Use and Ownership

31. Is Software valuable?
Like any invention, software is an asset that has value to the University and to its author(s). Often even the simplest software function has commercial value simply because of the time invested in writing the code, not to mention the expertise needed to develop the function.

32. Should I file an invention disclosure if I have created software?
Software should be disclosed to the Office of Technology Transfer early in the development process. Disclosure to the OTT should be made before any public disclosure (oral or written) of the information is made. In this way, an informed evaluation can be completed for the potential invention and an appropriate protection and marketing strategy developed. To obtain a software disclosure form, please visit the Forms page on the OTT website.

33. Will my software be patented?
Each disclosure is evaluated by the Intellectual Property Committee for its patentability and recommendations are made to the Vice-chancellor for Research and the OTT on whether or not to patent the software, or to pursue alternate forms of protection.

34. How is OTT supported?
OTT is a self-supporting department of NCSU, solely dependent upon licensing revenues for operations and patent prosecution.

35. What is a Material Transfer Agreement?
A Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) is an agreement whereas one party agrees to provide another party with there materials. MTAs should always be considered when conducting any outside collaborations with industry or other academic institutions. MTAs are typically used to protect materials that may be proprietary and/or embody a trade secret.

36. Who can sign MTAs?
Only authorized individuals can sign a MTA on behalf of NCSU. PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SIGN THIS AGREEMENT ON BEHALF OF NCSU. If a company wishes to obtain materials from a NCSU investigator or if an investigator desires materials available from industry, the investigator should contact the OTT.

37. What is the Bayh-Dole Act?
The Bayh-Dole Act, passed by Congress in 1980, created a uniform patent policy among the US federal agencies that fund research in the non-profit and small business sectors. The Act provides recipients of federal research funds with the right to retain ownership of their patents with the underlying tenet that federally funded inventions should be licensed for commercial development in the public interest. This principle is reflected in virtually all university policies whether or not the invention is federally funded.