Commercialisation

Within commercialisation, we distinguish between direct and indirect commercialisation. Direct commercialisation is understood as selling or licensing R&D results. Indirect commercialisation is the creation of spin-off companies and the contribution of R&D results to this company in kind.

The diploma thesis is, by its very nature, an independent work and therefore the student is entitled to the economic copyrights to it. The situation is different when a diploma thesis is created within the framework of a project, then the conditions of this project should be taken into account.

The rights to intellectual property developed by an employee of a higher education institution as part of the employment contract and as part of their duties as an employee shall belong to the institution as an employer.

No, the service is not commercialisation.

Yes, it is possible. It is then necessary to enter into a service contract with the so-called implementation card.

The most common forms of implementation are:

• introducing the results of industrial research and development works or development works into the Applicant's own business (and in the case of projects carried out by a consortium of companies - the activities of the Leader of the consortium or the consortium member(s)) by starting production or providing services on the basis of the obtained project results;

• granting a licence (on market principles) to use the rights vested in the Applicant (or the Consortium/consortia) to the results of industrial research and development works or development works in business activity conducted by another business entity;

• sale (on market principles) of rights to the results of such research or works in order to introduce them to the business activity of another business entity (with the proviso that the implementation of the results of R&D works is not regarded as the sale of the results of such works for further resale).

(source: https://www.ncbr.gov.pl/fileadmin/user_upload/import/tt_content/files/6… )

It is not possible to transfer the rights to the results free of charge to a business entity or any other entity. The transfer of property rights held by the university to the results following the completion of the project must take place on market principles and may not constitute illegal public aid.

The author of the diploma thesis or any other work carried out as part of the studies is a student or a doctoral student, because according to the provisions of copyright law, as a rule, the copyright on a work is held by the author.

The authorship of the work is not affected by the participation in its creation of the supervisor, i.e. the researcher who supervises the process of preparing the work. Their role is to give guidance and comments to the student and to indicate the issues that should be addressed in the work. This means that the contribution of the supervisor is of a non-creative nature and does not affect the scope of the author's rights to the work he or she has created.

The University is not completely excluded from using the diploma thesis written by its student. Pursuant to Article 15a of the Copyright Act, a university, within the meaning of the provisions on higher education, shall have priority in the publication of a student's diploma thesis. However, this right is limited in time - it can be exercised by the university only within 6 months from the date of its defence. If the university does not use the priority of publication of the diploma thesis within that period, the student who is the author of the thesis may publish it.

The University may, in certain situations, conclude a written agreement with the student on the basis of which the student transfers to the University the copyrights to the works prepared by him/her. This applies to situations when e.g. the diploma thesis is carried out within the framework of a given project financed from external funds or an agreement with a business entity etc.

However, if a doctoral student is at the same time employed at a university, then the copyright on the works created by him/her will be governed by an agreement between him/her and the university.