The working group technology transfer and legal matters comprises the working areas technology transfer, law, scientific library and documentation as well as foreigners' support.

Technology Transfer

The IPK has had its own technology transfer office, the Technology Transfer and Law Working Group, since 2002.

The staff working in the Technology Transfer department are responsible for creating the contractual framework conditions for cooperation with both industrial research and academic research partners, and for examining the research results generated at the IPK for their industrial applicability and economic potential. Economically exploitable research results are appropriately protected under intellectual property law before they are disseminated and subsequently made available to interested economic partners at standard market conditions.

Great importance is attached to the early and comprehensive dovetailing of scientific and commercial-legal expertise.

For this reason, the working group is regularly actively involved in the planning of exploitation-relevant scientific projects in advance, provides information on the conditions of national or international funding programmes, recommends project-specific property right strategies and discusses possible exploitation options with the responsible scientists and external partners.

Every year, about 30-40 individual projects are supervised in this way and a large number of project-related contractual agreements are drawn up or reviewed and negotiated.

Most of the additional income generated by the IPK from the exploitation of research results is used to finance the IPK's research activities.

Another central task of the working group Technology Transfer and Law is the coordination of the Institute's patent affairs and the further development of an active patent policy as well as the handling of all arising questions of industrial property protection. In this context, the working group is the first point of contact for all questions concerning employee invention law and supervises the invention disclosures of the scientific staff.  

Law

In the area of law, the Technology Transfer and Law Working Group provides legal advice to the individual working groups in the Department of Administration and Central Services. In particular, the following tasks and areas of expertise are addressed:

•     Labour and employment law, science law
•     Commercial administrative law (especially state aid law)
•     Copyright law, data protection and data security law
•     General civil law (in particular public procurement, contracts for work and services and tenancy law)
•     Foreigners' law
•     International law