Learn about patents
Patents are an important source of information for you as a student and engineer. They contain important technical information and can help you gain insight into an industry. If you want to patent something yourself, you must first investigate which patents already exist. As an engineering student, it is therefore useful to have knowledge about patents and how to find them.
Patent system
The intention of the patent system is to provide a legal protection for innovations. An innovation is defined as a solution to a technical problem. It also have to fulfil certain conditions such as novelty and inventive step to be patentable. In a patent application an inventor has to describe (disclose) how to solve a technical problem in order to get a granted patent for the innovation. After a time period of 18 months, the patent application becomes publicly available so that everyone can read about how the technical problem was solved. In return, the inventor gets the exclusive rights to her/his invention. This gives a market advantage; no-one is allowed to sell, copy or redistribute the invention without the permission of the owner(s) of the patent. Both patent applications and granted patents can be found in patent databases
You can learn more about patents on the webisite of Swedish Intellectual Property Office's (PRV).
Patent document
Since patents describe technical content with a legal language it might be hard both to find and understand the information you are looking for. If you need help to get started, read the guide on how to find and read patents or book a time for an introductory session in patent databases
Patent process
A granted patent is valid in the country where you have applied for the patent protection. To get protection in several countries, you originally had to send in an application to each country separately. To make the process somewhat easier, there are nowadays procedures regulated in international treaties. Now it is possible to send in an international PCT application to WIPO or an EP application to EPO, but you still have to decide in which countries you want protection and pay national fees. This also means that there may be several patent documents linked to the same invention. These documents are called members of the same patent family.
Patents for students and university employees
Sweden has a quite unique exception in the law regarding ownership of inventions called the Teacher's exemption (or the Professor's privilege). This exception says that a teacher employed at a University owns the rights to his/hers inventions.
As a student you may work with information leading to patent applications in your degree projects. This will affect how and what you can write and present from your degree project and should be regulated with a contract before you start our project.
If you as a KTH student or employee have an idea that might lead to a patent or be commercialized you can get support from KTH Innovation.
For more information about the professor's privilege, See the law text: SFS 1949:345
Policy for management of intellectual property created at KTH (docx 63 kB) .
