IP and commercialisation
From invention disclosure to licence: a transparent workflow
From invention disclosure to licence: how a TTO runs evaluation, committee, protection and marketing with confidentiality and disclosure timing in check.
An invention reaches the market through a chain of decisions: someone discloses it, the technology transfer office checks it, experts evaluate it, a committee advises, the institution decides, and only then do protection, marketing and licensing follow. The chain is transparent when every step has an owner, a deadline and a written outcome, when confidential information stays with the people who need it, and when nobody has to reconstruct later who decided what and why. This article walks through the stages, the questions each one should answer, and how EnaTTO records them.
Why the path from disclosure to licence gets lost
Most TTOs know the stages. What goes wrong is the record between them:
- A disclosure arrives by e-mail, the evaluation sits in a separate document, the committee minutes in another folder.
- Nobody sees that an inventor plans to present the work at a conference next month, which may matter for patentability.
- The decision is taken, but its reasoning and the ownership question are not written down next to the case.
- Years later, a licence brings revenue, and the office has to piece together which disclosure, which patent family and which agreement it belongs to.
A workflow does not replace judgement. It makes sure judgement is asked for at the right time and that the answer is kept.
Stage 1: the disclosure
A good invention disclosure answers a few questions clearly: what the invention is and what problem it solves, who contributed (including people outside the institution), when it was made, which funding it came from, and whether anything has been or will be published or presented.
The last point deserves its own field. A planned paper, poster or talk is a date the office has to know about before it happens. Treat it as a deadline, not as a remark in free text.
In EnaTTO, a disclosure is opened as confidential by default. Inventors can be internal or external; contribution shares are recorded as entered and the system warns if they do not add up to 100, but draws no legal conclusion from them. Planned publications and presentations are recorded on the disclosure and tracked as IP deadlines; they are not shown to external users, and while the institution's IP review is not yet recorded, they stay out of exports, notification texts and report details.
Stage 2: completeness check and evaluation
The TTO first checks that the disclosure is complete enough to evaluate. Then it decides which evaluations this case needs. Not every disclosure needs every review: a software tool may need a commercial view and an ownership check, a new compound a prior-art search and a patentability opinion.
In EnaTTO the workflow template for invention disclosures runs Draft → Preliminary review → Evaluation → Committee → Institutional decision. At the evaluation stage the TTO specialist chooses, per disclosure, which assessments are required (technical, commercial, patentability, prior art, ownership) and who carries them out. Reviewers can be internal or external experts; external experts get time-limited access that closes on the server when it expires. Each reviewer sees their own assessment, the inventor sees only what is shared, and the case cannot move to the committee before all chosen assessments are complete.
Stage 3: committee and institutional decision
A committee gives the decision weight and spreads responsibility. It works best with a clear agenda, a quorum, a declared conflict of interest where relevant, and a recorded outcome with reasons.
EnaTTO keeps committees with members and roles (chair, member, rapporteur), quorum, meetings, attendance and agenda. Members declare conflicts of interest, and votes are recorded as totals by default, or per person if the organisation switches that on. Committee members get access to agenda records for the meeting plus 30 days; joining a committee later does not open strictly confidential agenda items.
The institutional decision is a separate record: protect, do not protect, release to the inventors, defer, or keep as a trade secret, with an ownership note and the reasoning. EnaTTO records the institution's decision; it never derives ownership, inventor rights or revenue shares from academic affiliation or anything else. If the organisation needs a second approval level, for example a vice-rector, it can switch on that optional level in the workflow settings.
Stage 4: protection
Once protection is decided, the work becomes deadline management: priority year, PCT national phase, annuities, office actions and costs.
An approved protect decision opens a portfolio record in EnaTTO. Patent applications are tracked per office (for example TÜRKPATENT, EPO, WIPO/PCT, USPTO, or the national offices in the country profiles), with status history, office correspondence, time-limited access for the assigned patent attorney and expenses by currency. Deadlines are suggested from the office profile and the dates you enter, and a person confirms them; reminders follow 30, 7 and 1 day before. For published applications, an EPO check compares the published data and the EP Register status with your record, and you choose what to update.
Stage 5: from patent to technology
Licensees do not buy patent numbers; they buy a technology. A technology record should bring together everything that makes the offer: the patent family, the original disclosure, related projects, documents and know-how, the readiness level and a market view.
In EnaTTO a technology links IP assets, disclosures, projects, documents and know-how. It keeps a TRL history (1–9) and market assessments that the TTO scores; the system does not calculate or suggest a score. A promotional summary that may be shown outside is kept apart from the internal technical description.
Stage 6: catalogue, interest and negotiation
Publishing a technology is a deliberate act. EnaTTO's public technology catalogue shows only what the TTO publishes: code, title, promotional summary, sectors, keywords and current TRL. Publishing requires a promotional summary and a recorded institutional decision on every linked disclosure.
A company that clicks "I'm interested" confirms its request by e-mail; confirmed interest becomes a licensee candidate and the commercialisation team is notified in the app. From there you record the negotiation steps: meetings, calls, e-mails, a confidentiality agreement, term sheet, offer.
Stage 7: agreement, revenue and revenue sharing
Licence, assignment and option agreements are recorded with the licensee, the technology and the terms you agreed (exclusivity, field of use, territory, upfront fee, royalty rate and base, minimum annual payment). These are information fields: EnaTTO does not calculate what is owed.
Revenue (upfront, royalty, milestone, minimum payment, sublicence share) is entered against a signed agreement. Revenue sharing is defined per agreement: the TTO enters the recipients and their percentages, the total cannot exceed 100 per cent, and any remainder is shown as undistributed. The system only multiplies the amount received by the percentages you entered. There are no default shares and no deductions.
What a transparent workflow gives you
- One timeline per case: every transition, comment, assignment, decision and deadline in one place, written to the audit log.
- Confidentiality that follows the record: confidential and strictly confidential cases are visible only to the people involved; justified access to a strictly confidential document notifies those responsible.
- Indicators without extra work: disclosures, decision time, protection rate, applications, grants, licences and revenue come from the same records into the period reports.
If you would like to see this workflow with fictional data, request a demo.