Publish or Patent?

The Office of Technology Commercialization hopes to enable you to do both!  Publishing your research or publicly disclosing it before filing a patent application can severely limit your patentability and could completely bar you from receiving a U.S. or foreign patent.

Seeking a patent does not preclude publication of research results, and, in most cases, does not delay publishing. To retain the potential for foreign patents, a U.S. patent application must be filed before any description of the invention is publicly disclosed.

The following are examples of public disclosure and when they are considered “published”:

• Publications in journals, books, etc.
  The day the journal is mailed out from the printer.
• Abstracts for meetings
  The day the book of abstracts is mailed from the printer.
• Handouts given out during a poster presentation or oral presentation
  The day they are handed out.
• Dissertations and Theses
  The day they are placed on the library shelves.
• Publications on the Internet
  The day they are sent out/posted.
• Posters and oral presentations at meetings, including seminars that are open to the public
  The day presented.
• Progress reports to industry sponsors (when not covered by a confidentiality agreement)
• Federally funded grant abstracts (When grants are funded, U.S. government agencies may post all or parts of the title and abstract of the proposal on the Internet. Keep key concepts for a patent out of the title and abstract of all proposals.)

What Is Not a Public Disclosure?

The following are NOT public disclosures, but likely require that all present are university employees or federal appointees:

• Presentations at departmental meetings (if not open to the public)
• Presentations at Interdepartmental meetings (if not open to the public)
• Grant proposals (but mark sections that are confidential)

However, seeking a patent first does not preclude publication of research results, and, in most cases, does not delay publishing. To retain the potential for foreign patents, a U.S. patent application must be filed before any description of the invention is published in an article, abstract, thesis, presentation, or other public format.  More information regarding the term publication in patenting context can be found here.

Please contact us before presenting, publishing, or disclosing your discovery to others. We will work with outside patent attorneys to accommodate publishing dates, but to achieve optimum results, a description of the discovery should be submitted at least three months in advance of first publication, to allow time for review and for drafting a patent application.