TRANSFER AND

ENTREPRENEUR CENTER

Once an invention disclosure has been submitted to OVGU's Transfer and Entrepreneur Center, it is first checked for formal completeness and correctness. You will receive an immediate notification of receipt of the invention disclosure. Under certain circumstances, we may contact you with queries with the aim of completing the invention disclosure and purging it of legal errors.

Based on the accuracy and completeness of the invention disclosure, we can check the extent to which the invention is novel and inventive, and thus meets the minimum criteria for a successful property rights application, for up to four months. This process can be accelerated if a qualified prior search result is already available, for example, from OVGU’s Patent Information Center.

Otto von Guericke University will then decide before the end of the four months whether the invention will be claimed and prepared for patent application. For this purpose, we also have the right to make use of third parties such as patent attorneys or patent exploitation agencies. These service providers will contact you as the inventor to clarify any questions they may have and, if necessary, to provide further documentation such as drawings that comply with the applicable official standards, experimental descriptions or feature analyses to distinguish your invention from the state of the art. In special cases, the question of an application for an invention may also be submitted to OVGU’s IP Board, which has an advisory function with regard to applications for intellectual property rights filed by OVGU. OVGU will generally file a German patent application. In special cases, however, it is also possible to file a European patent application as the first application. This may be the case if employees of foreign collaboration partners (universities or companies) were involved in the invention and a joint application is to be filed.

After the invention has been filed (confirmed receipt at the responsible patent office), you will usually have the right to publish the contents of the invention. However, please be careful not to publish any additional features or further developments, as these may be used in a subsequent application. Early publication would prevent this. The patent application will be published eighteen months after receipt of the application by the Patent Office and will then be visible to the outside world. During the intervening period, the Patent Office will draw up one or more examining reports, which will usually need to be discussed and responded to. Again, we will draw upon your specialist expertise for this purpose.

Up to twelve months after filing the first patent application, a decision will be made as to whether the application should be extended to cover other countries. This is possible, for example, through an international PCT application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which currently encompasses 152 contracting states. Nationalizations or regionalizations can then be submitted in selected countries after a further maximum period of 30 months (with a few exceptions). You will receive timely release of your rights to file your own patent applications under your name and at your expense in all countries not selected and claimed by OVGU.

As a general rule, OVGU will not sell the intellectual property rights but will instead conclude one or more license agreements with third parties. The inventors are jointly entitled to 30 % of the resulting proceeds, which will be divided in accordance with each inventor's  share in the invention.

For further questions, please contact the team at the Transfer and Entrepreneur Center, Transfer and Intellectual Property Rights Department (contact person: Mr. Thomas Voigt; E-Mail: thomas.voigt@ovgu.de; Tel.: +49 (0)391 6752091), who will be happy to help you.