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.
'Knowledge Share': a Powerful Tool Available for Scouting Technologies Patented in Italy
Created in 2019, 'Knowledge Share', (www.knowledge-share.eu), a project funded by the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, is a portal run and managed by the Italian Patent and Trademark Office, the University of Politecnico di Torino and NETVAL, a network putting together a large number of Italian universities and Italian spin-off companies as well as important public research bodies, scientific hospitalisation and care institutes, foundations and agencies.
The aim of 'Knowledge Share', which has been recognised as best practices by the European Union in 2021, is to facilitate and enhance technology transfer and be a touchpoint between universities, companies and financial sponsors by providing clear and comprehensive information related to patented technologies from public research in Italy.
With a coverage spanning the paramount technological and industrial fields in our country and a rate of 30-50 new patents added each month, today 'Knowledge Share' provides the most exhaustive overview of public research and of technological and scientific know-how in Italy.
The new version of this portal, 'Knowledge Share 2.0' (KS 2.0), was launched in January 2024 and in addition to the patents section now features a new section reserved for Italian start-up and spin-off companies.
KS 2.0 also employs AI to improve matching between searched keywords and projects available on the portal, and searching is facilitated by an easy and intuitive interface available in both English and Italian.
KS 2.0 has a semantic search engine, which, unlike conventional search engines, is capable of creating a representation of the meaning of the words searched and comparing it with the representations of the concepts of the patents available on the portal.
The contents of the portal are curated and reviewed by a dedicated team to ensure that they comply with the portal’s 'total quality' communication standards, and all the technology information is presented in a clear and simple language that can be easily understood also by those users who are not acquainted with patent-specific language.
KS 2.0 also features, for each patent, a 'Marketing annex' that highlights the advantages and prospective applications of the patented technology, making it possible for users to better evaluate the potential of the patent and its suitability for their needs.
User access to KS 2.0 is allowed by registration, which is free and open to all big companies, small and medium entities, investment funds, accelerators and incubators from all over the world, and gives users the possibility of:
- Interacting with the project team
- Accessing contents relating to published projects,
- Sending requests of contact with the Research Teams
- Retrieving the newest contents about the innovation ecosystem and,
- Being contacted by the other users with proposals for cooperation.
The project also aspires to scale up at an international level by setting up similar portals in any country that may join the initiative, thus further expanding the possibilities of valorisation of new technologies.
It is clear from the above that 'Knowledge Share' might prove extremely useful for companies in pinpointing technologies of their interest to be exploited by means of licence contracts or similar agreements.
As is known, however, such agreements always require extremely careful drafting and our in-house attorneys-at-law with long-standing, extensive experience in this area can certainly provide effective consultancy in this respect.