Skip to main content

Search

Protection of rights

Inventions and products can be protected through various means. The business developers at SDU RIO assist researchers in identifying the most effective methods to protect the rights of the researcher’s innovations.

If you have made an invention or have an innovative idea, please fill out the Invention Disclosure form. Upon receipt of your Invention Disclosure, a business developer will contact you and evaluate your project within two months.

This establishes you as the inventor. SDU might claim ownership of any potential IP, including trademarks, patent applications and granted patents according to the law.

As an employee of a public research institution, you are obligated to report any inventions made in connection with your work.

Inventions might be protected through patents, trademarks, or utility models. Additionally, if your invention includes software, it is per se copyright protected.

Read more about the common ways to protect rights below.

Copyright protects original works of authorship. It protects text, source code, graphics, and sound effects but they do not protect your idea or the inventive steps to your idea.

Relevant products: Software, apps, webpages, e-book/series and books/series.

Copyright is free of charge and is automatically established the moment you create your product.

Protects the design, shape, or look of your product, also fonts and icons. NB design protection offers 1 year grace period in Denmark.

Relevant products: Apps and webpages design protection both national and international.

Application is registered from time of payment, but a one year grace period is in effect.

There are three basic criteria for patentability:

• Novelty: to be granted a patent, the invention must be the first of its kind in the world;

• Utility: a valid patent cannot be obtained for something that does not work or that has no useful function;

• Inventiveness: to be patentable, your invention must be a new development or an improvement of an existing technology that would not have been obvious to someone working in your area of specialty.

A patent grants the owner of the invention the right to exclude others from producing, using, selling or importing the invention into a geographical territory for a limited period - for up to 20 years.
 
Patent applications are drafted by an external patent attorney. The RIO business developers has access to specialists in almost any field.
 
The patent attorney will involve you in the writing process and ask you to review the application before it is filed.

Protects logos and names and thus hinders competitors of copycatting your look or brand.

Relevant products: Apps, webpages, e-book/series and books/series. Trademark registration both national and international.

Application is registered from the time of payment.

A utility model protection is the 'small' patent for the inventions which do not differ enough from existing products to be patented. Lasts only 10 years.

Relevant products: 'Physical' inventions.

Takes 2-3 months but the application is not published until after 15 months. This type of protection is supported by relatively few countries. 

Find the Inventions Disclosure form

Are you a researcher with an idea or a technology that has business potential? Report your idea.

Go to form

Contact the business developers

If you need information about how to protect the rights of an invention.

Contact the team

SDU RIO University of Southern Denmark

  • Campusvej 55
  • Odense M - DK-5230

Last Updated 10.04.2025