General data protection regulations

As the team leader, you obtain and process other peoples’ personal data, e.g., application letters, recommendation letters, employment contracts, appraisal interview reports, and/or information related to illness. Legislation places great responsibility on you and your university in the way that the personal data of students, applicants, and employees are processed and managed, with major penalties for breaches. HR will have designed and implemented measures relating to all its processes – discuss with HR what you need to do so that you and your university comply with the rules.

Recruitment policies

You, the university, the funding agency, and the candidates all have strong interests that need to be taken care of professionally. Before you can advertise a vacancy, the legal and financial implications need to be checked and approved (signed off on by those responsible, maybe even by the president of your university). The advertisement and hiring procedure need to meet your university’s standards; e.g., is it open, efficient, transparent, supportive, and internationally comparable in its field? Your university or institute may also need to comply with national or internal rules; e.g., if it carries the European Union HR logo of excellence (see Box 2.1 for some of the EU policies that should be adopted in this case). All candidates should be treated equally. This may seem hard or not very practical, but a recruitment decision based on having interviewed one final-stage candidate in person and another by Skype only should be postponed until you have met both in person. There may be additional rules, guidelines, and recommendations to comply with, such as:

• PhD graduates should leave. PhD graduates need to broaden their scope, so retaining them as a postdoc in your group may seem good for you but is bad for their career progression. The recommendation may be “no internal recruitment of PhD graduates for postdoc positions.” Special circumstances may warrant exceptions.

• No lifelong postdocs. Postdocs who have several consecutive fixed-term contracts are likely to end up unemployed with poor career prospects. Maybe there’s a guideline that after a couple of years postdocs should either be promoted to more senior positions or leave. Your organization may not allow more than two fixed-term postdoc contracts or set a maximum of four years of postdoc work in total.

• Internal candidates. The general rule may be open, transparent, and merit-based recruitment, but in some instances internal candidates may have priority for job vacancies. For example, a vacancy for a research assistant may need to be first offered to employees who are currently, or about to become, unemployed (because their previous project has ended), or this may be used as a mechanism to stimulate internal talent exchange for a certain category of staff. You may be allowed to recruit externally only if there is no internal applicant or if none of the internal candidates meet the job requirements. This is yet another reason to find out about such requirements because if an employee believes that he or she meets all the criteria, it may lead to an official complaint or even a court case.

• Recommendation. A minimum of three letters of recommendation may be required for final candidates. You may be tempted to make your favorite candidate an offer immediately, but there may be hidden factors that you only discover too late (see Table 2.1).

Performance policies

Most universities have annual performance or evaluation interviews conducted by supervisors with their PhD candidate or postdoc and often supported by an HR officer. The meeting has a formal status (i.e., the supervisor may have to grade the performance), and the report of the meeting will be signed by all parties and archived for legal purposes. If each new PhD student or postdoc starts with a clear work plan in the first month, and if you regularly meet and discuss progress with members of your group, there should be no surprises; everyone knows the project is going well and that the meeting will be a relaxed one. It may focus on:

• Project strategy. The progress of the project and its academic output should be evaluated in relation to the original plans. Obviously, at the end of a PhD project, there should be a decent PhD thesis, several of the thesis chapters may already have been submitted for publication, and results will have been presented at workshops and conferences, possibly complemented by some media attention or other forms of dissemination. But since most projects go beyond the original plans due to increased insight during the course of the project, it is essential to refine – or sometimes even redefine – the scientific tasks on a yearly basis or more often. If time permits, some side projects may be initiated (e.g., a follow-up study on some striking or surprising observations).

• Skills-development strategy. You can reflect on professional and personal skills: which of the individual’s technical and personal skills need extra attention for them to be more successful in the project, and which are important for a successful career after this project. Develop a strategy and concrete implementation plan; take into consideration massive open online courses (MOOCs), traditional classes, coaching, training, mentoring, internships, and similar (see Table 2.2).

PhD candidates are your trainees at the beginning of their contracts and need to grow professionally and personally into independent researchers by the end of the project. It is in the interests of both the candidate and the supervisor that the project succeeds, but it is also in the interests of both parties (and the team) that the contract is discontinued if growth is insufficient for finishing a thesis within the allocated time. Therefore, it may be appropriate to start with an initial contract for, say, 12 months and then decide whether the individual’s progress warrants renewing the contract for another two to three years (depending on local employment regulations, of course). Postdoc researchers often get contracts of one to three years at most. These may still include a probation period of, e.g., a maximum of two months (in the Netherlands). By the end of that period, you have to decide about continuing their contract or not – it should have a very high chance of being right for them and for you. Luckily, in almost all cases, this deadline is passed almost unnoticed because the work is proceeding well.

However, supervisors sometimes run into cases where, in retrospect, a no-go decision would perhaps have been wiser and better for both parties. A prolonged stay as a PhD candidate or postdoc may have turned into an unsuccessful struggle that reflects badly on the individual’s future career prospects within and outside academia. It is therefore very important to plan and monitor your team members’ professional and personal development so that you can base your decisions on mutually agreed-on performance requirements. If well implemented and also well documented, the PhD student or postdoc and you should be able to agree about the situation, and the facts should show that progress and growth were sufficient (go) or not (no-go). You should provide maximum clarity about the requirements for a go, mention in advance if you have any doubts, and warn about a likely no-go, but do allow some time for improvement and offer enough supervision, support, mentoring, and training. Box 2.2 provides an example of clear communication with advance warning, objectives, targets, and timeline; of course you should first meet face-to-face and afterwards provide (and archive) the written confirmation. Consult your HR advisor for the formal procedures to follow. Most likely you will only be able to legally opt for a no-go if clear agreements have been made and filed at one or more formal meetings and the conditions that would have to be met for a go have been clearly outlined. After a no-go decision, your HR department should help the individual to develop an alternative career path.

The lives of PhD candidates and postdocs can be hectic for many reasons (see Section 1.5). Some may find it very hard or impossible to share their problems and worries with you. As their supervisor, you have a prime responsibility for ensuring that each team member can develop, which is easier if they are happy, but difficult (if not very difficult) if they have hidden problems. You need to create a culture in which people can talk to you before it’s too late. You need to listen carefully, ask open questions, check whether you have understood the message properly, ask whether there are more issues, be empathic and use your ears, eyes, and heart, and as much as possible try to step into their shoes. Do recognize that there is always the temptation to project your own history and solutions onto the other person. So be aware of your own biases and prejudices, and refrain from making early conclusions, judgments, or condemnation. You can consider asking other people to help: a senior researcher, an HR advisor, a professional psychologist/specialist, or a confidential advisor. Be ready and open to face yourself in the mirror as well. Perhaps you need to learn to show more empathy or to improve your communication or supervisory skills. In some ways, a failed team member reflects on you and your team. Seek a mentor for yourself, and take some courses – your HR advisor can advise you on options. Continue to learn and hopefully you will do better next time.

After a go decision, various new problems may arise that warrant you taking action (e.g., serious issues with behavior, performance, or misconduct). An HR officer can help you to resolve the issues by using informal procedures, which may include internal or external mentoring, coaching, review, advice, and mediation, with the right to challenge each other’s views. These are nearly always preferable to invoking formal procedures.

Training and advancement policies

The career prospects of the PhD candidate and postdoc should be discussed. This may be obligatory for PhD candidates in their final two years, but considering future career options at an earlier stage is recommended. You need to help them realize where their talents can be useful in society because that is where their next job could be found. Discuss the opportunities for jobs within and outside academia and strategies to improve their curriculum vitae (CV) over the course of the PhD period. Do develop a plan with concrete action points. For postdocs, discuss strategies of how to fund their own research line and how they can be implemented. Strategic questions to discuss should also include how they can build a network of potential collaborators in their field or across other fields to better position themselves for opportunities. Which smaller or larger national or international grants could they apply for? Which organizations offer the best career prospects?

Give your team members time to explore potential career opportunities, e.g., by participating in a career perspectives exercise (see Table 2.3).

You need to support your group members as they come to the end of their projects, so take the writing of honest recommendation letters very seriously. If there are still loose ends to the project, such as manuscripts that may still need revision, do make agreements about who is going to do what and when. Perhaps you can offer a group member a short-term unpaid contract as a guest researcher (e.g., zero-hours appointment) so that your former group members are not disconnected from everything they may still need (e.g., access to proprietary data and computational infrastructure for revising a manuscript or access to the email addresses they have used for a long time). As team leader, you should ensure that they hand over any data, software, methods, and other valuable items relevant to your group’s research and that you (or someone in your group) completely understands what this involves and where to find it (maybe to complete or revise manuscripts). Ideally, the new team member will start the day after the old one finishes or even have some overlap with them. Archive the lab notebooks and any other documents and manuals that contain essential background information for the data, software, and methods. You should also archive all your email correspondence for a couple of years, too.

Keep in contact with team members who leave: you never know whether, when, and how the future may bring you together in mutually beneficial ways. They can become your best ambassadors, collaborators, industrial or philanthropic sponsors, employers of your graduates, or perhaps even your direct boss in the distant future – who knows?

Perhaps you can offer the one leaving a solution to having one or two months’ unemployment before their next job starts. If you have some spare money and tasks that need doing, a short-term paid contract may be a good solution. But do check first with HR because there may be legal obstacles (see Table 2.4).

You are part of a large organization, and this assignment challenges you to get to know your organization better in two ways. First, what are the explicit HR rules and processes for you and your team members to adhere to? Second, what are the hidden or implicit HR rules and processes that have shaped your organization and how it behaves now? Check the university internet or intranet for relevant documents, and consult your HR officer to discuss whether you have understood the rules and processes well in all the following assignments.

Project preparation

Your financial officers will help you calculate the personnel, overhead, and other costs. The project budget shows the total cost and a breakdown into specific items. The financial officers also interpret the funding agency’s formal guidelines and can:

• Explain the funding agency’s rules on direct and indirect costs and advise you on which costs are eligible to pay from your grant.

• Advise you of any costs made before the project starts; such costs will generally not be reimbursed, unless allowed for explicitly in the guidelines.

• Inform you about procurement rules (i.e., when you or your organization can buy goods only via an open-tender procedure so that any external party can make a bid). This often includes the buying of standard materials such as lab consumables or any large-scale supplies you use.

• Help you to obtain quotes from different independent parties for major goods or services you need to buy or lease. You will need to ensure that you get the best value for money. They can help you avoid conflicts of interest and stick to the procurement rules (e.g., not buying goods from a former colleague who is now in business unless you can prove with several quotes that you really got the best value).

• Inform you about local seed money for doing exploratory or pilot studies, making short visits to experts to acquire new knowledge needed in the project, getting strategic and editorial support for writing a professional grant application, etc.

• As a rule of thumb, PhD students are somewhat cheaper to employ than postdocs on an annual basis but not necessarily on an output per euro or dollar basis. And for PhD candidates, you will need to budget for a contract of three or four years. Postdocs are often recruited for one or two years (see Table 2.6).

Universities may receive a substantial financial bonus for training PhD candidates, with a sustainable financial model requiring a university to have 100 PhD graduations per year or more. Indirectly you will benefit, and in some universities your group may even receive a direct share of the PhD bonus (e.g., $5,000 per thesis. Postdocs have more possibilities to find their own funding or a personal grant, so the financial benefit for your group can be large (i.e., on the order of $100,000 or more, unless the postdoc then chooses to move elsewhere with the grant).

During your project’s lifetime

You are responsible for the financial flow during the course of the project. Luckily, the financial officers will do lots of the budgetary work for you. For instance, they may:

• Open an account for managing the finances for your project.

• Instruct you on how to archive all invoices, payroll transactions, or other documents that prove your expenditures.

• Instruct you on how to complete timesheets that prove when and how much time has been spent on the project by you and/or your team members.

• Communicate with the funding agency and book the prefinance, interim, and final payments on your account.

• Pay your project’s bills from this account after formal (signed) approval by you and by the project controller who safeguards (stores) the bills and checks their eligibility against the project’s guidelines.

• Monitor the expenditure and inform you about timing or if you are spending too little or too much. For example, do not buy a new computer or expensive equipment close to the end of the project because with depreciation over several years, the agency may only partly refund the purchase cost. Often you cannot submit any costs after the project ends; these will not be reimbursed unless explicitly allowed for in the project’s contract.

• Prepare the financial paragraphs in interim reports that you (or they) are required to submit to the funding agency.

• Inform you on a regular basis about the financial state of your startup package (if you had one) and of your other projects. They may also inform you about any annual or other financial support given by your institute (e.g., a standard travel budget, bonus for teaching a class, royalties from intellectual property). You will need to have a good overview of your money flow (in and out) and the total balance at all times.

• Charge the legitimate absence of team members to accounts other than the project account, thereby preventing your project from burning up money without making progress, e.g., during parental leave or extended illness or time out to take care of relatives. Unfortunately, some countries still don’t have decent maternity, paternity, or care leave (see Table 2.7).

It is likely that you will want or need to make changes to your project plan. Perhaps the field has moved on since you wrote the grant proposal, new technologies have arrived, costs for certain items have changed, or you simply discovered better ways to achieve your overall aim – research projects are to a certain extent unpredictable and therefore funding agencies are generally open to you making changes to the original plan. Thus, they are also open to changes in the budget. Although it is very unlikely that the budget will be increased, you are often permitted to move money within or sometimes even between cost categories – but do first ask the funding agency for formal permission.

It goes without saying that you should use your funding wisely and efficiently. The funding agency may be paying hotel and travel expenses for visits to other labs or to conferences, but do not claim anything related to a subsequent holiday. Separate your business expenses from personal ones. Unethical use of any research funding can lead to trouble.

Raising Additional Money

Although the contract with the funding agency has been signed and the project budget has been accepted, there may still be ways to “gain” some extra money:

• If you buy essential equipment that will be used only part time or for less than the depreciation time, then the costs may be only partly covered by the funding agency. But you can offer use of such equipment to other parties for payment.

• Project results can be protected and licensed or sold to other parties, with the permission of the funding agency. This can generate a one-time or continuous cash flow, e.g., from royalties (see Section 2.5 for several examples from the humanities to the exact sciences). Any royalties should, of course, be paid into your research account because they arise from your work (but check your university’s rules about sharing revenue). In fact, even your articles and books are protected by copyright and licensed to the publishers, who may pay you royalties for books or chapters you have written (see Section 3.2).

• You can apply to other agencies for small grants to arrange workshops, or you can stimulate your team members to apply for their own travel stipends. This can save some project money that you may be allowed to spend on other activities. You should also put team members forward for prizes, which can include an amount that will cover a conference visit as well as looking good on their CV.

• If your salary is covered in part or completely by the grant, then you are saving your university money if you were already paid by them, say as a tenure-track assistant professor. You should try to negotiate your share of the money saved and keep it in a separate account from the grant so that you can spend it freely, even after the grant period has finished.

• Funding agencies often allow those who are awarded a major personal grant to transfer it to another institution where the conditions are more favorable, in terms of facilities, presence of top peers, or better financial support through a substantial startup budget. Once you have a major grant, other universities may compete for you or try to seduce you by offering you more attractive (financial) conditions than your existing institution. Such offers can be used to bargain with your home institution to gain yourself more financial support. It’s a reality check for the ambitious. But your current and potential future employers may see your lack of loyalty as a negative.

Financial barriers

Finances also bring various risks. A grant may cover the direct costs for a PhD candidate but not the overhead costs; the funding agency can simply argue that these overhead costs (e.g., the salaries of administrative staff or the cost of office space) would have existed without your project. But your institute may charge these overheads to you, and consequently your project funding will be depleted more quickly than you imagined. A grant may also cover the direct costs for a PhD candidate for two years only. You may need to apply for another grant to be able to complete your project.

Finances can create barriers between different institutes if they are each financially independent entities, making cross-disciplinary collaboration more difficult. If your government were to pay a bonus per graduated PhD candidate, who would be given the bonus: the university, your faculty, your institute, or perhaps your own research group? Such bonuses can be substantial and should be negotiated at the start of a new PhD project. Cross-disciplinary collaboration may also prove problematic if the funding agency only pays for PhD candidates and postdocs and not permanent staff (after all, they are already paid by the university). If a permanent staff member of one institute spends time (e.g., as a supervisor) on a project that is formally managed by another institute at the same university, the personnel costs may be passed on to that institute. While the project is neutral at the aggregate level of the university (the university pays the supervisors), one institute will now have funding in hand, while the other has a financial deficit. Such short-term win-lose situations may frustrate collaboration between different institutes or faculties and can lead to a lose-lose situation, with fewer grant proposals for cross-disciplinary projects being initiated and the university as a whole obtaining less funding than in a win-win situation. You are leading your team in your organization and must negotiate the best conditions for your team and for your university. See the end of Section 1.5 for the negotiation steps.

Financial value

Who are the users and end users of the results arising from your project? Why do they need or want your results? These are essential questions to ask yourself before, during, and after the project. Step into the shoes of the users and end users and try to estimate the financial value of your results for them. Should you still share your results for free, or should you opt for payment? If you do a consultancy project for a commercial company, should only your hours be charged or should you claim a share of the revenues generated from using your input? Perhaps you wrote some software: can you sell it to multiple parties and generate a stream of income so that you can hire someone to maintain the software and hardware, support users and end users, and further develop the software (which can be in the interests of all the purchasers)? Consider the need for further agreements (Section 2.4) and/or protecting commercial interests (Section 2.5). See also the following anecdote.

You are responsible for your project’s budgets and expenditures and don’t want to risk problems here. But do you really know which expenses are eligible and which are not according to the rules and regulations of your university and of the specific agency funding your project? Find the correct answers to all the following questions (and consult your financial officer for assistance).

• Champagne. You celebrate the project’s newest and great publication with one or two bottles of champagne. But who should pay for this: you, the funding agency, or your university? How about the food and drinks served at your Friday afternoon cocktail sessions or at a group retreat?

• Booking a flight and hotel. Your team member is going to a conference abroad, which has been specified in the project plan and budget. You can simply book the flight and hotel yourself? Or do you need to follow a formal authorization procedure and/or use a particular travel agency to ensure that the costs are refunded? Can you charge any daily subsistence costs (e.g., meals, taxis, hotel, etc.) or only up to a certain limit? For example, would a first-class train ticket be covered or a business-class flight?

• Buying a laptop. You want to buy a new laptop for your team member at a supplier who has a special offer. Can you just go ahead and order it? Find out what the purchasing rules are at your university. And are there procurement rules?

• Buying expensive equipment. Your project is moving forward successfully, and after two of its four years’ duration, you have the material ready for further analysis, for which you now need equipment that will cost $50,000. Will the funding agency still cover these costs completely? Its depreciation time might be four years, so will you then end up with a financial deficit of $25,000?

• Printing posters, editing and publishing papers, filing patents. Posters and open-access papers are standard output from your project, and they can cost you a lot of money to produce. Can you charge them to your project? What about all the costs associated with protecting your intellectual property (IP) by filing for a patent?

• Overtime. Your group member works 60 hours a week. Can you charge all his or her hours to the project? What happens if the labor contract between the university and the individual states only 40 hours a week?

• Work-related hours. Can you charge the time you spent in preparing the project (before its official start)? Can you charge to the project grant the time spent in preparing meetings, for visiting a general rather than specific scientific conference, for traveling, for work phone calls taken during traveling, and for weekends when certain experiments needed to be monitored or executed?

• Two or more projects. If a group member works on two or more projects, do you have to fill out timesheets, and if so, to what level of detail (time units), how frequently should they be checked and signed off – and by whom?

• Changing internal policies. What happens if the university changes its internal rates for indirect or direct costs during the course of your project? If this leads to a deficit, who will cover it?

• Changing currencies. Your project budget was calculated and approved for one or more years on the basis of estimated costs. But what should you do in the following cases: unfortunately, you now need to buy goods that have become much more expensive due to a less favorable exchange rate. Or what if your grant amount suffers from changes in the exchange rate because your funding agency is based in another country?

Obligation to report ideas

Any creative work, ranging from an outline of your initial idea to any concrete outcome from that idea, should be properly protected by a copyright, trademark, and/or patent (see Section 2.5). You are obliged to report such work to the relevant university offices as soon as you are “reasonably able to conclude that there is a question of such a creative work.”Footnote ¹ They will then assess the nature of your idea or work and may plan, or ask you to plan, further action. For some creative work, the action required is pretty standard (e.g., specify your name and your affiliation correctly on the article, book, or other publication so that you are credited as the creator/author and thereby also raise your university’s standing (which is good for you too). Other types of creative work may require more customized action. Perhaps your software can be distributed under license either freely or for a fee, which could be a source of funding for maintenance, user support, or further development. Brand names, domain names, or logos you create can be registered or given a trademark (but this should comply with your university’s policy). Last but not least, knowledge and technology transfer officers scout for patent opportunities (as a welcome sources of extra funding), and you should inform and involve them at an early stage. A patent application must mention your affiliation (patents count in university rankings just as normal publications do). But because there are investments and returns involved, there is more to agree on than simply who owns the IP (see Section 2.5).

Transfer of rights

You may see yourself as an entrepreneur developing your own scientific business and thus deserving all the credit and revenues. In reality, you are more like a franchisee within a host university, and the costs of the holding are huge (way more than your salary and the facilities you use). This warrants a transfer of IP rights in whole or in part from the employee to the employer. You will still be identified as the creator or inventor (this is a moral right), and revenues may be divided between you and the university. Typically, the university will first be compensated for the application/registration, maintenance, and protection of IP (e.g., by a patent), and the remaining revenues may be distributed to the inventors (including students), research groups, faculty, and university (e.g., 25 percent for each). Funding agencies and any third parties involved may claim a share, too.

You can reclaim the transferred IP right if the university does not want to make use of it within a reasonable period of time. In this case, you and/or your research group will make the registration and be compensated first for the protection of your IP, while the remaining revenues may be divided between the inventors, research group, faculty, and university using your university’s standard distribution model.

Always be clear about confidentiality

Add a very clear “Confidential” or even “Strictly Confidential” watermark to documents (reports, PowerPoints, emails, etc.), or put this in headers or footers (see the email disclaimer in Section 3.5). You can also say that something should be treated as confidential, but such an oral statement should be followed by a written statement within one or two weeks for your message to be legally valid. Saying something is “Confidential” suggests that the information should, at the very least, not go public, but who may actually see and/or use it (inner circle) and who may not (outer circle) remains unclear. “Strictly Confidential” may suggest that information is meant only for you (i.e., only the sender and recipient are in the inner circle), but without further clarification, the recipients may still make their own interpretation. So be very clear what you mean, and inform others appropriately.

Copyright

Copyright protects your written work but not the idea expressed in the text. The same is true for photos, videos, and software. Copyright protects your work in two ways:

• You are the only one allowed to publish, share, or reproduce the work (you have an exclusive right to exploit it).

• Should you license other people (e.g., a scientific publisher) to exploit your work, then they (e.g., the publisher and their readership) should credit you properly, and they cannot change the work in any way that would damage your reputation (you have moral rights; they have moral obligations).

The copyright claim “made by you” holds only if the work is not trivial and not derived from someone else’s work. It should clearly show signs of your intellect, your creativity, or your personal touch. What do you need to do to obtain a copyright in your work? The answer is simple: you only need to indicate your copyright by adding a copyright symbol (©) whenever you think it is appropriate, or “© [your name here]” to mark yourself as the author, or “© [your name and date]” to mark the date you started work on the item. But you do not actually have to add anything because the copyright claim does not depend on the symbol but on you being the “author” of the work.

In the scientific literature, people are allowed to copy (quote or paraphrase) short fragments from your text in their own texts, provided that they credit you properly and reference the original source. Larger fragments, figures, tables, images, photos, or artwork can only be reproduced with your or your publisher’s explicit permission, with proper credit given to you and possibly for a fee. Copyright also applies to anything that you put on your website or blog: no one can reuse the content without your permission, but with your consent you, and the source should always be properly acknowledged. In contrast, people are free to add a link to any information on your website because the link is considered an appropriate credit mechanism. You can protest against unsolicited use of your content by accusing people of “plagiarism.” This includes content in all the versions of your unpublished articles and project proposals, which fall under the confidentiality of the evaluation procedure; this content is your IP and cannot be shared by anyone (not even by a colleague) with someone else who is outside the confidential procedure of your university and/or at the funding agency.

Trademarks

Brand names, domain names, or logos you create for your products or services can be registered or given a trademark. One can mark almost any name, sound, or appearance under a trademark (annotated by TM for concrete products, etc.) or a servicemark (annotated by SM for services used in the United States and several other countries), but potential confusion with existing trademarks has to be ruled out. Two names may be spelled differently, while the appearance (e.g., font or color) or sound may be considered too similar to an existing item. After official registration, you can use ® as the symbol to indicate your IP. You will need to pay the maintenance fee to the Trademark Office to keep the trademark valid. No one else in your field can capitalize on your success by introducing a similar name in writing, sound, or appearance.

Most names used in science are not registered as trademarks. You simply devise a catchy acronym for your method, tool, or project and put it on your funding proposal or in the title of your article. Unless reviewers complain, the name will then appear in the list of funded projects and published articles. You cannot expect reviewers to do a proper check of registrations or trademarks to see whether the name you chose will cause a problem (e.g., because “ParallelX” appears to be trademarked and you receive a letter from a lawyer with instructions to stop using “Xparallel” as the name for your method because it is too similar). Too bad if you have to change the name after your paper has been published.

In the case of licensing or selling a patented invention to another party, trademark choice and protection are their business. They may want to give your invention a name and maybe even a logo; having a name and logo can help to advertise the product.

What exactly is a patent?

A “patent” is defined as the description of an innovative solution to an existing problem. The patent application describes:

• The problem

• The state of the art in the field

• Your solution to the problem

• Why your solution to the problem is innovative

• Examples of your finding to support commercial applicability

• Exactly what you want to protect, i.e., the “claims” marking out the limits of the invention

• A detailed benchmark to existing products or processes to define the technical or other differences.

Legally, the patent provides the inventor with “exclusive rights” granted by a sovereign state for a “limited period of time” in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. “Exclusive” means that it forbids others to perform commercial activities that fall under the patent. “Rights” means that you can commercialize the invention, e.g., sell products based on the patent or sell licenses for its use. If your patent is built on top of one or more other patents, you will first need to obtain licenses to make use of these inventions if the other patents are held by someone else.

When can you apply for a patent for an innovation?

There are three strict conditions:

1. 1. It should be new. The field’s state of the art on the “priority date,” the day of filing your first patent application for the invention, is what counts. Neither you nor anyone else should ever have shown your invention to someone else or talked about it anywhere (not at a conference or your normal group meeting when external guests were present), nor have you ever published it (not even in a conference abstract, press clipping, blog, or email to an external colleague) before the priority date. If you have to show your idea to people (e.g., to raise funds), then you must make sure that all those present have first signed a confidentiality agreement. New is not the same as innovative.

2. 2. It should be innovative. No one with a general knowledge of the field of the invention (i.e., who is supposed to know the state of the art in the field and its literature up to the day of you filing your patent application) should be able to derive your technology or process in a straightforward manner given the field’s current state; your invention must not be self-evident by any means. Surprising new combinations can be innovative and thus eligible for a patent. This aspect is called “novelty.” New and innovative are not the same as applicable.

3. 3. It should be applicable. Your concept for a product or for a process to produce a product should be concrete enough to be functionally, industrially, and commercially relevant. It may still be in a prototype phase, but a solid proof of concept is needed.

How a patent differs from a normal scientific article

A confidential draft of a future scientific article can form the basis on which a patent attorney can write the patent application (Table 2.10). However, there are some major differences:

• Patents have inventors, not authors, and all inventors must be named on the patent. Anyone else who helped incidentally (“a pair of hands”) should not be listed on the patent. Any mistakes in who you name may have major consequences for the validity of the patent.

• You have to define matters exactly in a patent application (see Table 2.11). Your definitions must be precise and complete, whereas you can assume such definitions will be known by the readers of a scientific article.

• You can make claims that you have not yet proven; revisions to the text can be made up to one year after the priority date (see below).

• Claims should be substantial and expected to generate cash within two to three years because a patent application incurs a high fee.

• Every word written in the patent application can have judicial implications. It is therefore crucial to obtain the help of a patent specialist in writing a patent application.

Once your patent application has been filed (see below), you may submit your scientific article to a journal and start talking about your ideas at conferences, for example. Most commercial (project) partners will allow a delay of 6 to 12 months for a patent application to be made.

Filing a patent application

Most universities have a transfer and technology liaison (TTL) office with ties to external patent specialists. They will also help you predict the balance of costs (e.g., $100–$20,000 for the initial stage of application, $10,000 or more for final filing and maintaining, and more than $100,000 for defending the patent) and benefits (e.g., royalties; although net revenues over $100,000 per academic patent are rare, there are incidental success stories of millions of dollars even in academia). Revenues may be assigned to the funding agency, your university or research group, or even to you personally.

A first step in thinking about a patent application is to check widely and thoroughly: mine the literature and internet, use every search option from PubMed to Google to Google Scholar, and look into patent databases such as Espacenet (see “TRY THIS”). If you find any papers, reports, or patents that describe innovations similar to yours, then the route of patent profiling becomes much less attractive – and you can save the expenditure. From the moment that you decide to involve specialists, it’s an expensive business going forward.

The next step is to find and contract a patent specialist, who will do a similar search before even starting to write an application. When the application has been written, the patent specialist will file your application either at your national patent authority such at the Netherlands Patent Office or the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in the United Kingdom. Your application can also be filed at more “international” authorities such as the European Patent Office (EPO), the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), or the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) for one “worldwide” application that you need to convert later into individual patent applications per country. The day of filing a first patent application on the invention is called the “priority date” – within 12 months subsequent applications can claim the priority date of the first application. The patent application can be filed in any country where you see a market and therefore require a patent, but you need to decide to proceed well before 30 months from the priority date. Your patent application will be reviewed by the national patent authorities (for which an expensive fee is charged). After several rounds of revisions, if you are lucky, your final version will be approved, and the patent will be registered and published (i.e., patent has been granted). Note that a patent may be granted in one country while it is still pending in another.

Also note that anyone can review your patent once it is published and take you to court to dispute the novelty, self-evident nature, or applicability of your concept or product. You will also have to protect your patent, i.e., look for any infringement to your patent and start a court case to call a halt to its use (and you will incur legal fees). Costs for patent maintenance generally increase rapidly after a “low cost” initiation phase of two to three years; if the budget balance is less favorable than anticipated, you can retract the patent by no longer paying the maintenance costs. You should realize that a good termination strategy for your patent is as important as the development strategy; otherwise, the costs may rise hugely without you having any prospect of a return on your investment.

Will a patent make your group rich – or poor?

You’re a researcher and may have no business or commercial interest. The success or failure of a patent to raise a return on investments nevertheless depends to a large extent on the energy and effort you are willing to put into it. Check some of these requirements:

• You are prepared to visit potential commercial parties, nationally or internationally.

• You can inspire and convince third parties to invest in further (applied) research to develop a prototype into a marketable product.

• You know how to deal with people who are used to being leaders, e.g., your director, dean, president, and investors.

• You are interested in helping to write the patent application and are on top of negotiating licenses or selling the patent.

• You are happy to show up for court cases if the patent is disputed.

• You have a talented, entrepreneurial PhD student or postdoc who is skilled and has the time and ambition to start a business of their own (with you as a great mentor and shareholder).

• You would look forward to designing marketing material, recruiting staff, and hiring external knowledge-transfer specialists (and many more tasks) should you decide to start your own company.

The hard truth is that most patents cost more money than they will ever generate. It is generally assumed that no more than 1:300 or 1:3,000 patents will be profitable in the end. It’s all part of the game (while not exactly the same, very few scientific articles are really “successful” either).

Some researchers have adopted strategies and tactics from the business world (e.g., protection based on multiple patents is harder to break than protection based on one patent) and have raised a source of income for themselves, their group, and their university. They can fund their research activities over many years without having to compete for funds from “normal” agencies. Other scientists are named as an inventor on a patent jointly with industry partners, and the nature of the patent is protective; i.e., the claims in the patent protect a broad field in which the company is or might become active (e.g., all crops listed in Table 2.11a). Or the description is so detailed that the use of even obvious tools or methods has been included (e.g., a mouse and keyword to be able to run software, as in Table 2.11b).