International Research Collaborations

Protecting Inventions

Whether you work internationally or closer to home, you have a duty to protect university inventions.

The first step is disclosure. If you make an invention in the course of your employment at UWM, or with university resources, you must report it through the UWM Inventor Portal.

Your disclosure will allow UWM to consider whether to patent your invention. If a patent application is filed, you can publicly disclose the invention without jeopardizing its patentability. ("Public disclosure" means an oral presentation at a scientific meeting, a personal discussion with an outside party, or the publication of an abstract or article in a journal. If you are unsure what constitutes a "public disclosure," consult the Office of Technology Transfer.)

If you need to disclose an invention to an outside party before it's under patent protection, you should ask the person to sign a confidentiality agreement. The UWM Office of Technology Transfer will negotiate and sign the document on behalf of the university.