PhD student at Unicamp's Oils and Fats Laboratory, Larissa Grimaldi has been working, since 2018, on developing alternative sources to palm oil for industrial application in food and cosmetics.
Dedicated to macaúba oil, a palm tree widely distributed throughout the Cerrado and Pantanal areas of the country, her work was recognized as having a high potential for innovation. After communicate your results to Inova, the Unicamp Innovation Agency filed a patent application that was made publicly available by the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) this year.
The material generated in the research, containing 11 innovative fractions of macaúba pulp and almond oil, meets the three requirements (novelty, inventive activity and industrial application) required to file a patent application. The protection of intellectual property, however, was almost made impossible due to a publication made by Larissa at the beginning of her master's research.
“At the beginning of the research, we chose an interesterified fraction and took it to a conference, in the form of a poster, with preliminary results. It was enough to make me question my originality when it came to protecting the technology”, says the researcher.
The publication of research results before the protection of intellectual property is one of the main reasons, as identified by the Innovation Agency Inova Unicamp, which have made it unfeasible to deposit technologies with potential for innovation and social, economic and environmental impact, developed at the University State of Campinas.
How do you know if a technology is patentable?
Knowing whether the invention really constitutes a novelty is the first step towards protect intellectual property. In the case of patents, in addition to needing to be new, the invention cannot derive in an obvious way from the state of the art, that is, from what is already public knowledge, and it must still have the potential for industrial application.
The culture that the filing of a patent must precede the publication of scientific articles, especially when it comes to knowledge about technological areas, has been built and encouraged at the University by Inova Unicamp, which is Unicamp's Technological Innovation Center since 2003, when the Agency was created.
One of the procedures that helps in identifying an invention is the search for information in patent databases, something done by Inova. The prioritization search is a check of the state of the art in specific databases that can be carried out, together with the bibliographic review, before the research is started or at the time the Invention Communication is sent to Inova.
“A patent is one of the most effective ways of returning to society what it gives us. When we protect, we value technology. The patent is a seal of approval that we really have something that can promote innovation and that is unprecedented. Through licensing, whether costly or free, we were able to transfer this to society, fostering a virtuous cycle of development for the country”, comments Ana Frattini, executive director of Inova Unicamp.
The number of Unicamp patents filed since the beginning of Inova's historical series exceeds 1.200, with 197 licensing contracts currently in force.
Publish or patent: the order affects the result
A frequent question for many researchers concerns the decision between publishing the results of research or patenting them. The fact that the publication is a consolidated indicator of productivity is important. The patent, in turn, is a competitive advantage in the market that can promote socioeconomic innovation, facilitating the transfer of technologies to society.
Nothing prevents both activities from being carried out successfully, but, in this case, the order of choices affects the result. If the researcher intends to apply the invention to create his own company – a spin off academic – or see it transferred to the market through licensing, the recommendation is that the patent application be requested beforehand and that publications be made only after this consolidated filing.
The publication and dissemination of research, after filing the patent, is also a strategic way of giving greater visibility to the technology, increasing opportunities to transfer this knowledge to society.
How to protect research at Unicamp?
The first step to protecting research developed at Unicamp is to forward an Invention Notice to Inova. The Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency is, according to Unicamp Innovation Policy, responsible for guiding Unicamp researchers and developing this entire technology protection and transfer strategy.
The Invention Communication is a document that must be completed by researchers linked to Unicamp containing a summary of the information necessary for Inova to understand the technology, search public patent bases in Brazil and abroad and, if applicable, protection, define the most appropriate strategy so that the protected technology has a greater chance of being licensed.
Access here more information and the Invention Communication form
Is the protection only for completed searches?
If to publish an article or participate in a conference, researchers do not necessarily need to have their research completed, the same applies when it comes to patenting an invention based on the results of scientific investigations. At Inova Unicamp, priority, that is, verification of the non-existence of an identical product, process or improvement, is sought based on the results that researchers present.
Improvements or complementary developments can be protected later, within the same inventive concept, with a Certificate of Addition, an accessory to the patent that accompanies it in all legal aspects. “The important thing is to take the first step, communicating the invention to Inova Unicamp, before any disclosure and, preferably, before the defense of the dissertation or thesis", recommends Frattini.
Benefits of Intellectual Property Protection
Remember Larissa, mentioned at the beginning of the text? After the post-publication scare, and with the support of Inova's multidisciplinary team, she and her advisor, professor Ana Paula Badan, from the Faculty of Food Engineering (FEA-Unicamp), managed to protect the results of the research with macaúba oil.
In addition to the patent application for innovative lipid fractions, the Agency understood that it would also be important to protect the knowhow the process of obtaining them. Although known in the industrial environment, the steps of total hydrogenation and interesterification, used in the study, had never been carried out with oils from the fruits of the macaúba palm tree.
Learn more about protection from knowhow
Meanwhile, Larissa continued to produce articles. The ready and revised materials, now that the patent application has been filed with the INPI, can be disclosed with the results duly protected.
“The macaúba - Acrocomia acuelata - presents high productivity and requires smaller planting spaces, and can be associated with other crops and livestock production. A great opportunity to serve the national market in a competitive and sustainable way”, argues the researcher.
Article originally published on the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
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Inova Unicamp launches campaign to protect intellectual property
