University aims to collaborate with businesses via IP scheme

THE University of Birmingham has become the first Midlands university to join an initiative which promotes new ways of transferring intellectual property (IP) to industry

It has joined the Easy Access Innovation Partnership, a collaborative project to promote new ways of sharing intellectual property and to adopt new approaches which make it easier for universities and industry to work together.

Joining this initiative will make it easier for businesses to access the University of Birmingham’s research. Through its technology transfer agency, Alta Innovations, the university will be providing some of its IP portfolio for free using simple, standard agreements to make the whole process of IP exploitation much faster.

As well as making the adoption of its research and technology simpler, the university anticipates this will be a mechanism to encourage new and longer-term relationships with business and to open up new areas for collaboration.

Professor Adam Tickell, pro-vice-chancellor (research and knowledge transfer) at the University of Birmingham, said: “Although the University of Birmingham has always worked closely with industry we realise that for some businesses a university may seem like a complicated partner for collaboration.

“This initiative will enable businesses to access and adopt our IP very quickly. It’s an exciting step forward in our commitment to engage effectively with business and encourage use of the hard-won knowledge from our research for public benefit”.