Protecting your ideas - Intellectual property (IP)

Intellectual property (IP) can help you protect your ideas. We offer workshops on intellectual property which provide an introduction to the different types of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights, and registered designs. The workshops also consider how you may protect your intellectual property and how this may be translated through commercialisation into useful products and services for the benefit of society and the economy.

The workshops also include identifying commercial opportunities, evaluation and marketing of intellectual property, preparing a business case, and when to consider licensing or new start-up company creation as a route to commercialisation and investment fund raising.

As a result of this workshop, students should be able to:

• Recognise different types of intellectual property
• Identify and evaluate commercial opportunities and how to market intellectual property arising from research
• Know when it is appropriate to choose a licensing or new venture creation strategy
• Appreciate the basics of preparing a business case, forming a new venture and raising investment

During the workshop, we will develop some business cases around a product or service, so participants should bring with them an idea for a product or service for the group to work on together.

The workshop is run by Rachael Baird, Intellectual Property Manager, and Dr Neil Hayes, Commercial Manager at the University of Exeter's Research and Knowledge Transfer.

Find out and sign up to the workshops on My Career Zone.

For online resources and more information about protecting your business ideas please look at the British Library resources .