The management of Intellectual Property in the Technology License Office in an Open Innovation environment: The context of a Scientific and Technological Institution in Brazil

This paper researches issues related to the management of Intellectual Property (IP) of the results of the Research and Development (R&D) developed by the Competence Center for Manufacturing (CCM) of the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), which is considered as an Scientific and Technological Institutions (STI) that works in an Open Innovation (OI) environment, involving interaction among some STI with companies. The OI model is different from the closed model because it encourages innovation, not just with ideas that come from inside of the organization, but, also, with the ones that are outside. When the subject is R&D, in an OI environment, where there is an intense cooperation, the IP rights division is not an easy work. In such context, it is important to have an effective management of such IP rights. In order to develop this task, an action-research was done in the Technological Licensing Office (TLO) that supports the CCM of ITA, in Brazil. Based on this research, it was possible to suggest to the TLO the development of a process to search and identify technologies created at STI, giving the TLO higher proactivity to design guidelines for to the R&D teams in the referred STI.