Features of Exploitation Strategy

1.1 Exploitation Strategy

Exploitation analysis and activities go on for the entire life of the project, taking advantage of every progress-step and achievement. The exploitation approach of the project has been structured in a recurrent cycle in which every step enables refining to define a list of activities implementing exploitation. The sequence consists of the following items:

Identification of exploitable results

Every identified project outcome is rated to check its eligibility for exploitation: resulting items are listed and classified by means of typology (product, process, method, data etc.) to understand the ways in which they can be shared, delivered and accessed. For each result, the level of protection is defined, although it can be specialized during next steps of analysis, to allow IPR to be different for the various involved stakeholders. Results are also given a priority that represents their importance among the exploitation activities.

Identification of stakeholders

Exploitable results are associated with the groups of stakeholders identified by the project (education, technical developers, industries, public communities, authorities, policy makers, etc.). The match between the results and groups of stakeholders identifies different sets of results: this step of the exploitation definition process considers the opportunity to group them in subsets to handle them together or because of their dependencies. Therefore, exploitation deals with these collections of “bundles” with common features:

• specific purpose: the common aim of the result set
• type of business: the area of activity of the stakeholders that can be addressed
• required resources: elements needed to make the bundle sustainable

Association with actions

This is the conclusion of each cycle of the process. The purpose is to establish the concrete activities that implement exploitation. The actions are defined in relation to the results of the previous steps concerning stakeholders and bundles: each exploitable result is associated with one or more bundles related to a set or a single stakeholder group.

The actions are grouped in a set of focuses that depict specific areas of activities: technology development, knowledge building, educational training, standards development, services development, IPR protection, policy making etc.

As in the preceding steps, the definition of these actions can be refined and updated during the life of the project.

1.2 Exploitable Results

To identify the exploitable results of each partner and the current state of these results a table was constructed with these results, the state of this results and the possible audience.  The results are presented in Table 2.1 collects the exploitable results identified by the partners at this stage of the project (Month 12). The description of each result is based on partners’ contribution and should be considered from a preliminary perspective to draft the initial version of the Exploitation Report. Next versions of this report will include further description of each result if required.

Table 1: Exploitable results of COMPINNOVA and their state up to month 12

1.3 Exploitation Management

EXIS acts as Exploitation Manager heading the Exploitation Committee (EC) with representatives from NTUA, SUN, CRANFIELD, FU SAV. The Exploitation Committee supervises the management of IPR and coordinates the definition of the exploitation plan. Specifically, the HELENIC-REF EC shall:

1. Coordinate and implement exploitation activities;
2. Propose IPR and exploitation strategies and (eventual) associated updates to the Consortium Agreement (CA);
3. Contribute to proper exploitation of the results by supporting all Partners
4. Monitor the use of resources for exploitation issues.

The Exploitation Activities are in close relation with Dissemination Activities (as they are -or will be- presented in Deliverables D4.14-D4.18) in order to achieve a sustained impact. The approach of HELENIC-REF for achieving a sustained impact is presented in the following Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: HELENIC-REF approach for sustained impact

1.4 IPR Management

The management of IPR is strictly ruled by the Consortium Agreement (CA) which includes all provisions related to the management of IPR including ownership, protection and publication of knowledge, access rights to knowledge and pre-existing know-how as well as questions of confidentiality, liability and dispute settlement. In the CA, the Partners have identified the background knowledge included and excluded.

The CA regulates the ownership of results (Section 8 of the CA)

The knowledge acquired during the project shall be considered as a property of the contractor generating it, and in this sense the originator is entitled to use and to license such right without any financial compensation to the other contributors. If the features of a joint invention are such that it is not possible to separate them, the contributors could agree that they may jointly apply to obtain and/or maintain the relevant rights and shall make effort to reach appropriate agreements to do so.

The CA also regulates the transfer of results ownership (Section 8.2 of the CA)

Each Signatory Party may transfer ownership of its own Foreground following the procedures of the Grant Agreement Article 30.

Each Signatory Party may identify specific third parties it intends to transfer the ownership of its Foreground to in Attachment (3) to the CA. The other Signatory Parties hereby waive their right to prior notice and their right to object a transfer to listed third parties per the Grant Agreement Article 30.1

The transferring Party shall, however, at the time of the transfer, inform the other Parties of such transfer and shall ensure that the rights of the other Parties will not be affected by such transfer.

Any addition after the signature of the CA requires a decision of the Project Steering Committee (PSC).

Status of IPR (M12)

As the project reaches its first year, the results from the ongoing research about proving the ability of Hydrogen production and the reduction of water with Lorentz forces are promising. The results once fully verified, can subject to publications or even patents. The project may deliver additional results by the end of the project that the partnership may wish to exploit. In this case the Consortium (headed by the Exploitation Manager) will discuss use of such results on a case-by-case basis.

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For the management of knowledge, the consortium and the Exploitation Manager are regularly monitor and evaluate possibilities of IPR. The consortium has already defined future activities to discuss and evaluate raising questions. According to the initial plan, at the next general meetings these discussions will take place. At all upcoming meetings as session will be devoted to IPR and exploitation issues to further specify the plans of the consortium.

Any third parties that may involve in exploitation will sign a non-disclosure agreement.