The aim of these articles is to keep our Clients and Associates updated about developments in the sector of Intellectual Property in general and our firm in particular. In this way, we wish to provide a broader view of the tools that the field of trade marks, domain names, patents, designs and related rights offers to entrepreneurs to enhance and protect their efforts in researching and developing new solutions and ideas.
Deep Tech Finder: Empowering Connections Among Universities/Startups and Prospective Investors
The European Patent Office (EPO) has recently upgraded its Deep Tech Finder.
Deep Tech Finder is the digital platform established by the EPO to promote exchanges between the university and startup world and business realities by making available a comprehensive collection of university-filed and startup-filed European patent applications.
A study conducted by the EPO shows that the contribution of academic researchers to European patent applications has steadily increased over the past decades, now exceeding 10 per cent of all patents filed by European applicants at the EPO. However, this study also highlights that the transfer of academic knowledge to the market often remains a challenge for universities.
Deep Tech Finder is therefore particularly useful in that, by allowing free access to its extensive information, it enables companies, researchers and prospective investors to have a far-reaching overview of innovations in scientific and technological fields where universities, university spin-outs and startups now play a leading role.
To offer reliable results, when establishing Deep Tech Finder, data from the global platform Dealroom about startups and data from the European Higher Education Sector Observatory about universities were matched with the EPO’s Register and further reviewed by national patent offices of EPO member states.
With its new coverage of almost 900 universities and over 1500 spin-outs, Deep Tech Finder allows users to set various filters to better target their search.
Once the university/spin-out/startup of interest has been spotted, their growth stage and financial position can be viewed along with their EP applications and related status (pending, refused/withdrawn/EP granted and/or unitary effect).
Also, the search results can easily be exported with a single download to a CSV file for further use.
Deep Tech Finder is a useful tool for companies not only for monitoring the state of research in the most advanced sectors of technology and science, but also for identifying new investment opportunities.
For more information about this topic, please contact our patent attorneys.