Any employee or consultant who believes he or she may have created an invention has an obligation to disclose its nature and background to the University's Technology Transfer Office. Obviously, such disclosure must take place before the process of technology transfer can begin and before any of the benefits can be realized. Disclosure is critically important for all projects, especially where any portion of the funding comes from the Federal Government. To avoid overlooking inventions, researchers should err on the side of inclusion and let the Technology Transfer Office secure a professional evaluation. The Office has ongoing relationships with dozens of patent attorneys and a budget for paying these attorneys to examine any even remotely novel developments from a project.
Inventions are easy to define, but can be difficult to recognize.
Some University research projects are clearly oriented toward invention from the outset. If the research is successful, the result is likely to be an invention. In the course of other University research, inventions may or may not be a likely result. However, an invention could result if, while studying the radiation effects, the researcher discovered that a specific radiation frequency-applied at a particular period of plant gestation increased the size of the mature plant by an average of 5 percent. The technological process of applying that radiation frequency at that moment in a plant's life could be an invention.