Managing Intellectual Property in Collaborative Research Projects

Details

1-day course
CPD Credit: 6.5 hours; Competence/s: 4 

Course Delivery Options

Calendar-icon-blue-resizedOpen Course: Available on scheduled dates. Contact cpdtraining@engineersireland.ie or call 01 665 1305, or check our CPD Calendar here.

Course Aim             

This masterclass equips you to design, negotiate, and operate robust IP management in multi-partner research and innovation. You will learn how to align academic and industry incentives, translate funder expectations into workable clauses, and put practical IP governance in place across the full project lifecycle. Through case studies and actionable frameworks, you will learn to prevent common IP pitfalls. We emphasise tools you can immediately apply to your current and upcoming collaborations. The overall aim of this course is to ensure you leave at the end with a thorough understanding and appreciation of the role of IP in collaborative research projects.

Course Overview

A collaborative research project is fundamentally an IP-generating machine. Yet, the very nature of collaboration, which requires openness and sharing, stands in tension with the function of IP law, which is designed to grant exclusivity and control. 
In a collaborative environment, IP issues move beyond simple ownership (who created what) into complex realms of access, usage, and commercialisation. The strategic goal is not merely to "protect" IP, but to pre-align the rights of all partners to ensure that the resulting innovations can be efficiently deployed and successfully brought to market.

Course Programme

  • Collaborative research 
  • Intellectual property
  • Collaborative research and the role of IP
  • The IP perspective of funding entities
  • The different categories of IP
  • Academia versus industry
  • Various legal frameworks
  • Practical IP management during the project
  • Commercialization pathways
  • Why projects fail

Learning Outcomes

1. Knowledge (What delegates will know) - Upon completion of this masterclass, delegates will be able to:
  • Identify and distinguish between various forms of Intellectual Property (Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, Trade Secrets) specifically within a research context.
  • Explain the legal differences between Background IP (pre-existing), Foreground IP (generated during the project), and Sideground IP.
  • List and describe the mechanics of licensing, spin-outs, joint ventures, and assignments.
  • Understand the regulatory and institutional policies that govern IP in cross-border or public-private partnerships.
2. Understanding (What delegates will comprehend) - Delegates will develop a deep conceptual understanding of:
  • Why "clean" IP (clear chain of title and inventorship) is the primary driver of valuation during due diligence.
  • How to balance the academic drive for "Open Science" and publication with the commercial necessity of "Confidentiality" and patent filing.
  • How certain clauses in research agreements protect or expose the collaborating partners.
  • The lifecycle of a collaborative project from initial MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) to final market exit.
3. Skills (What delegates will be able to do) - Delegates will acquire the practical ability to:
  • Understand core IP clauses for Collaboration Agreements, including access rights and exploitation terms.
  • Review a project’s "paper trail" to identify gaps in assignments, researcher contracts, or non-disclosure agreements.
  • Analyse and align the often-conflicting interests of universities, industry partners, and funding bodies.
  • Assess research results to determine which commercialisation pathway (e.g., spin-out vs. license) offers the best fit for a specific technology.
4. Competencies (How delegates will apply it) - Delegates will demonstrate the professional maturity to:
  • Navigate complex negotiations between academic and industrial partners with a focus on win-win exploitation strategies.
  • Implement robust internal protocols for capturing inventions and managing lab notebooks to ensure definitive inventorship.
  • Prepare a research project to be "investor-ready" by maintaining a ship-shape IP portfolio.
  • Provide guidance on whether a collaborative project’s IP strategy supports the overarching business or institutional goals.

Who Should Attend

Are you working as a corporate patent/IP professional, as an R&D project lead in collaborations or as counsel in private practice and need to manage IP in collaborative research? Are you a researcher heavily involved in collaborative research projects? Are you a representative of some collaborative research funding entity anxious to better understand the role of IP in such types of projects? Are you working in a research university’s IP function? Then this is the right course for you.

Trainer Profile

Donal O'Connell is the Managing Director of Chawton Innovation Services, which offers consultancy in the areas of innovation and IP management. He is formerly a VP of R&D and a Director of IP at Nokia, where he worked for 21 years and gained wide and varied experience in the wireless telecoms industry. Donal is also a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College Business School in London, where he teaches about 'IP management'. 
Donal's books on IP include 'Inside the Patent Factory', Harvesting External Innovation', ‘Intellectual Property Risk Management’ and 'A Little Paranoia Goes A Long Way'. He is due to publish another book in 2026 on collaborative research and IP titled ‘The Art of Herding Cats’. Donal has been included in the IAM 300 (a network of the top global IP strategists) for several years.
He is a graduate of NIHE Limerick (now The University of Limerick) in Ireland in '85, with a Degree in Electronic Engineering. Donal has been involved in several collaborative research projects in recent years.