On April 24, Eurofue attended the conference organized by IPR Helpdesk on intellectual property and the impact on Horizon 2020 projects. Michele Dubbin (Intellectual Property and Innovation Advisor) placed special emphasis on the exploitation and dissemination of the results in order to achieve a real impact that gives continuity to the projects, a characteristic highly valued by the European Commission.
According to Dubbin, the European Commission realized that project results were left unused once the project ended. Hence, now we are stricter regarding the visibility, communication, dissemination, exploitation and impact of the projects, in order to give the greatest return to the subsidies delivered, since it is not enough to get a 10 in the of "Excellence", the impact and exploitation must be enhanced to achieve a good project proposal. It was highlighted that the exploitation of the projects does not necessarily have to be economic, it can be the free use of results for the education sector, for future research...
Before starting the communication and dissemination tasks, it was advisable to be clear about what and how the results must be protected. It is advisable to establish a priori what will be needed for dissemination and that the entire consortium agrees in order to avoid future intellectual property problems. It is compatible that the work has copytight and that it is published in Open Access. Therefore, the process begins by defining needs, followed by protecting the results, then dissemination and finally exploitation. In any case, all partners must be notified 45 days before making the results public so that they can object if necessary. It was also commented that special attention must be paid to patents, since they only work in the registered territory and do not last forever. Having a license is essential to give credibility to projects.
Lastly, Michele Dubbin explained the difference between communication and dissemination. The first term consists of transmitting the existence of the project, that is, informing society about what the project consists of and what benefits it has for citizens. While the center of the dissemination discourse is the results, there is no dissemination before results, which is why this activity is carried out at the end to maximize the impact.
