The objective of the Office is to stimulate the creation of intellectual property and manage the resulting assets in support of the mission of the University of Szeged: to provide the best possible educational experience for our students through excellence in teaching, research and creative activity, and service to the state and society.

Since the foundation of the Directorate and implementation of the intellectual property management policy, research activities of the University have intensively improved. The number and quality of its publications and patents are remarkable not just at national level, but also at international level.

In 2016 the IP portfolio of the University consits of nearly 50 patent applications.

Our mission is to facilitate, advocate and collaborate with the Faculties, Staff and Industrial Partners to support an environment for inventions and innovation at the University of Szeged by transferring and commercializing the University’s intellectual assets into benefits for our region and the public good.

Our main activities including (but not limited to):

Business relationship management consists of relationship development with strategic partners, spin-off companies and clusters related to the university. The primary goal of the Directorate is to support the cooperation between industrial actors and academics, thus providing services for both groups in a single-window approach within the university. Our aim is to promote university research facilities towards industry, to stimulate R&D projects in collaboration with industrial partners, and to support the commercialization of R&D results.

During our R&D&I project generation activity we continuously inform researchers and partners about the available domestic and international R&D funds, particularly calls of Horizon2020 framework programme, research and educational scholarships, funds established for consortium and calls of the European Commission. Our Directorate manages the project generation process, provides consultancy services and prepares summaries for parties involved.

Further services related to our activities:

IP protection services:

• Prior art search: The investigation of the invention’s novelty using international databases of patents and scientific literature.
• Investigation of patentability: The investigation of requirements for a patentable invention based on the patent law.
• Freedom-to-operate search: The investigation of valid intellectual property rights of others in a given region or country in order to avoid possible infringement of laws.
• IP protection consultancy: Consultancy service on general or specific questions related to intellectual property protection.

Business services:

• Commercialisability report: Analysis of inventions according to their commercial potential. The analysis consists of technical and business evaluation as well.
• Market research: Investigation of possible market applications of the technology and market analysis based on specific databases.
• Business planning: Assisting start-up companies in business planning.
• Marketing planning: Preparing marketing plan of innovative technologies, including brand building and development of sales strategy.

Enikő PITÓ
Director of R&D&I
Phone: +36 62 546 702
e-mail: pito.eniko@rekt.szte.hu