The first seminar will be held at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine’s Neuroscience Conference Room in Huntington from noon to 1 p.m. and will focus on medical- and health-related intellectual properties. The second seminar will take place at the Weisberg Applied Engineering Complex, Room 1103, from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30p.m. and will provide a general overview of intellectual property protection.
Each program will begin with an overview of the main areas of intellectual property law (patent, trademark, trade secret and copyright) and will continue with a focus specifically on the various types of patent protection. The program will cover the statutory requirements for obtaining a patent, university ownership of inventions; the differences between a patent application and a technical publication; the differences between inventorship and authorship; issues to consider to preserve patent rights in an academic setting; and determining if an invention is ready for patenting.
The sessions will be led by attorney Terry Wright of the firm Stites & Harbison PLLC in Louisville, Kentucky, and Amy Melton, director of the Marshall University Technology Transfer Office.
Wright has extensive experience advising clients ranging from small, privately held companies to multinational, publicly traded companies. He regularly prepares protection plans for intellectual property associated with consumer goods, medical and other mechanical devices, and life sciences-associated technologies.
Wright has a background in life sciences and experience with academic research in the areas of cardiovascular biology, molecular and cellular biology, pharmacology, and biotechnology. He counsels companies and university technology transfer/licensing offices regarding strategies for protecting patent-based intellectual property.
The seminars are free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. Please send reservations by e-mail to tto@marshall.edu. For more information, contact Melton by phone at 304-696-4365.