First activities on knowledge management and protection
Lorenzo Dall’Oro (RINA Consulting)
The activities related to Exploitation and Intellectual Property Rights management and protection play a fundamental role in EU funded projects and special attention must be given to the identification of the best possible protection roadmap in order to maximise the impact of the knowledge generated.
As a measure of the activities performed throughout the first year of the ICEBERG Project, a preliminary version of the “IP Protection Plan” was released in January 2021 for the exclusive use and internal consultation of the ICEBERG Consortium. The preliminary document describes the activities related to IP protection that are already under way and that will be performed throughout the course of the project.
The purpose of the document was to provide an overview of the main indications and best practices related to intellectual property rights and the use and dissemination of the results (also named foreground) generated by the ICEBERG Project.
According to the definition provided by the European Commission, “A Project Result is defined as any tangible or intangible output of the action, such as data, knowledge and information, whatever their form or nature, whether or not they can be protected.”
Thus, project results (or Exploitable Results – ER) are the outputs generated during the project which can be used and create impact, either by the project partners or by other stakeholders. Project results can be reusable and exploitable (e.g., inventions, prototypes, services) as such, or elements (knowledge, technology, processes, networks) that have potential to contribute for further work on research or innovation.
“The IP Protection activities identified a total of 35 ICEBERG Project resultsthat will be developed and achieved in the course of the project”
Dealing with exploitation of results means to evaluate the utilisation of results in developing, creating and marketing a product or process, or in creating and providing a service, or in standardisation activities.
Moving on from these definitions, the IP Protection activities identified a total of 35 ICEBERG Project results that will be developed and achieved in the course of the project, that can be traced back to 3 main categories: smart services and digital tools for the demolition sector and traceability, advanced sorting/recycling/processing technologies for End-of-Life building materials and new circular building products
The list of ICEBERG Project exploitable results was drawn up with the intention of keeping up-to-date with any newly-proposed inventions, applying for “formal” or “informal” IP protection and defining partners’ responsibilities and involvement in each of the results achieved within the project.
Throughout the project, in parallel with the detailed characterisation of each of the identified results, the best option for protecting the Results/Intellectual Property Rights will be chosen and subsequent actions taken in agreement with the responsible partner’s intentions.
