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Innovation and Intellectual Property Management (IIPM) Laboratory

Intellectual property (IP) is a tool to help govern global open innovation systems, and should therefore be given higher priority when leading into a more sustainable post-Covid-19 world.

The Covid-19 pandemic and anthropogenic climate change are both global challenges for humanity and crises of unprecedented scale that call for international collective responses. While both are urgent, the Covid-19 pandemic appears to many as more imminent, maybe because of its rapid spread and visible threat to life. In just a few months, the pandemic has led to large scale international responses, while mitigating climate change appears to be a much slower, longer endeavour.

For both crises however, intellectual property (IP) lends itself as an important policy tool. Innovation plays a major role for ending both crises for which solutions are likely to be technology  dependent. Considerations regarding the ownership, access to and usage of IP rights, such as patents, copyright, design rights and trademarks, but also of data and trade secrets are important for effective innovation processes and for governing collaborative, open and global innovation systems. For instance, patents (or the prospect of getting a patent) can provide strong investment incentives for stakeholders who engage in the development of green technologies as well as for finding the Covid-19 vaccine. Licensing mechanisms are important for the global south to access sustainable technologies, such as solar energy, but also for Covid-19 diagnostics and hopefully later the vaccine. Accordingly, understanding choices and effects of IP models along technology development processes is paramount for both crises. Continue reading.

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/