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Innovation and Intellectual Property Management (IIPM) Laboratory


The ALPS team is pleased to announce the start of a formal collaboration between the IIPM Lab, on behalf of the University of Cambridge, and the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa in Italy. The project is called “Climbing ALPS” and the local manager is Frank Tietze, while the overseas manager is Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, former member of the IIPM Lab.

The goal of the project is the study, refinement, and deployment of the ALPS technology developed at the IIPM Lab by the ALPS team. ALPS provides a trusted computing platform to automatically track, secure, and enforce licensing agreements using smart contracts, allowing for an accountable, transparent, and trusted royalty payments management system ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lLayRNK2u4).

The ALPS team has celebrated the formal start of the collaboration with a two and a half days workshop from 8-10 December 2021 at the Department of Computer Science in Pisa. Outcomes of the workshop include both technical (e.g. the standardization of smart license solidity implementations) and theoretical (e.g. case studies evaluation of the applicability of ALPS technology) results.


News & Blog articles

Welcome to Dr. Schäper

8 July 2025

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Thomas Schäper, who has recently joined us from the University of Münster as a visiting research scholar at the IIPM Lab. His research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, innovation, and intellectual property, with a particular emphasis on the use of large language models...

IIPM @ R&D Management Conference

1 July 2025

Qi Ang Du and Frank Tietze attended this year's R&D Management Conference in Pisa (Italy) organized by the Institute of Management of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna . Frank Tietze acted as one of the chairs for the IP Management track jointly organized since 2021 with Alfred Radauer, Martin Moehrle, Ioanna Stefan, Martin...

Newspaper article

2 June 2025

A short opinion piece by Prof. Tietze was featured in the Brussels Morning Newspaper calling for more innovation within our IPR systems to address global challenges: https://brusselsmorning.com/we-need-strong-intellectual-property-rights-for-a-sustainable-future/73186/