Inventor's and Author's Guide

This section addresses intellectual property policies and procedures, processes, disclosures, inventors and co-inventors, faculty and student entrepreneurs and resources available to them. The University has an established policy and procedures that provide specific guidelines to the TTLC staff for the administration and management of IP functions and also provide guidance to employees and students who elect to engage in IP activities.

Now here is how the process works. The Office of TTLC has two disclosure forms for your convenience. Should you have an invention that may be patentable that you need to disclose to the University you should download and complete an Invention Disclosure Form now.  In the event that you have a creative work that might require copyright protection you should download and complete a Works Disclosure Form now.  Should you want to process an application for a trademark or a service mark or a domain name call us at (850) 412-7232. 

A statement that very adequately addresses the decision regarding who should be named as an inventor or co-inventor on a patent application was adapted from the Oklahoma State University Technology Nexus Newsletter and modified by John Fraser, Florida State University and Past President of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). Click here inventorship, co-inventorship vs authorship to review this statement.

The Office of Technology Transfer, Licensing and Commercialization assists faculty, staff and students with the transfer of novel research results and other innovative and creative ideas to commercial markets for public use.  The most frequent approach is to license the development to outside entities. Alternatively, there are times when we will recommend that faculty member or student pursue the entrepreneurship route by creating a new company to take their innovation to the commercial market.  This mechanism could take the form of a new start-up or spin-off business based on the FAMU technology.  The employee and student are required to process appropriate required documents to complete this process including conflict of interest and appropriate affidavits.

When technology is commercialized successfully by the institution, revenues are distributed among the inventor(s), the college or department and the University as stipulated in the assignment agreement incorporated by reference in the IP policy and procedures.