IP Glossary - P

is a legal entity taking part in a FP7 project and having rights and obligations defined in the Grant Agreement with regard to the European Commission (on behalf of the European Union). The term participant is equivalent to the term beneficiary used in the Grant Agreement.

means any legal entity carrying out a Horizon 2020 project or part of a project, having rights and obligations with regard to the European Union or another funding body.

refers to the website where the European Commission provides information on funding for research and innovation projects under Horizon 2020, the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) and Competitiveness & Innovation Programme (CIP).

in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Programme refers to the non-beneficiary organisations contributing to the project by providing training and hosting researchers (or staff members) during secondments. These organisations include a letter of commitment in the proposal to ensure their real and active participation in the proposed project.

in FP7 Marie Curie actions, means an agreement signed between the beneficiary and one or more associated partners. This agreement has to be signed before the signature of the Grant Agreement.

in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Programme, refers to the agreement signed between the beneficiary(ies) and the partner organization(s) with the purpose of regulating their relationship. This agreement must comply with the Grant Agreement.

is one of Enterprise Europe Network's tools aimed at fostering techological and commercial partnerships between companies across Europe and beyond. It contains thousands of business, technology and research cooperation requests and offers from companies, universities and research centres from different sectors.

an exclusive intellectual property right granted by a government authority for an invention—a product or process that provides a solution to a technical problem—which meets the requirements of novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability. It entitles the patent holder to prevent third parties from commercially exploiting the invention, including making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing it, for a limited period of time, generally 20 years. To obtain a patent, technical details of the invention must be disclosed publicly in a patent application.

is a professional qualified in a scientific discipline and qualified to act in the obtainment of patent and design registrations.

defines the subject matter and technical features of the invention which are 'claimed' by the applicant/owner for exclusivity. Claims are expected to be short and supported by description section of the patent.

a portfolio of patents in the same technology domain, generally owned by different parties who agreed to jointly license them.

Patentability is the ability of an invention to satisfy the legal requirements for obtaining a patent. The invention must be novel, contain an inventive step (or be non-obvious), be capable of industrial application and not be in certain excluded fields (e.g. scientific theories and mathematical methods, these inventions cannot be patented at the EPO).

is the unauthorized copying, use, reproduction, distribution, or public communication of materials protected by intellectual property rights—such as literary, artistic, or musical works—without the permission of the rights holder, typically for commercial purposes.

the act of attempting to acquire credit card information, user names, and passwords via electronic communication (fraudulent e-mails containing fake links). The term ‘phishing’ is a mix of ‘password’ and ‘fishing’.

the act of misappropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages thereof, and pretending it is one’s own creation.

in Horizon 2020 is a document which summarises the beneficiaries’ strategy and concrete actions related to the protection, dissemination and exploitation of the project results. The content of the PEDR follows the evolution of the project from the proposal until the submission of the final project report.

in the context of FP7, this plan details the strategy and concrete actions for the protection, use and dissemination of the project results. It is prepared by the consortium in the early proposal stage to be presented to the Commission and becomes more detailed and completed during the project.

It is a sui generis protection system in Argentina that protects the rights of Plant Breeders (that is, farmers and growers) on new types and qualities of seeds granting them the ownership and exclusive rights to exploit their new plant varieties. These measures are aimed to promote efficient production and commercialisation of seeds.

a registered intellectual property right granted to the breeder of a new, distinct, uniform, and stable botanical variety, providing exclusive rights to exploit, reproduce, and commercialize the variety.

a legal document that entitles a legal or natural person to act on behalf of another person.

in Horizon 2020, means the procurement of research and development services involving risk-benefit sharing under market conditions, and competitive development in phases, where there is a clear separation of the research and development services procured from the deployment of commercial volumes of end-products.

an agreement that is generally signed by the parties before concluding final agreements. They are instruments that help parties draft, review and eventually agree the terms and conditions of a future final agreement, such as a licence or a partnership agreement.

a temporary measure that the court adopts in a fast-track procedure when there are special circumstances that could lead to irreversible damage.

in the context of European Research Council (ERC) grant schemes, means the individual researcher that submits Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grant proposals on behalf of the host institution and who has scientific responsibility for the project.

is a legal term referring to information previously disclosed to the public in any form (e.g. publications, documents, written articles, devices known, on sale, or used by the public, etc.) and any place (inside the national territory and outside) relating to the invention before its priority date.

"prior art’ refers to the disclosure of the patented invention before the date of the patent application, which may, as a consequence, negatively affect the novelty and and/or inventiveness of the patent application. Since an invention must be novel and inventive to be patentable, a prior art search is typically conducted either by a patentee or a person seeking to challenge the validity of the patent, either in a patent invalidation proceeding or in the course of a patent infringement litigation.

is the country where the patent is first filed before being extended to other countries.

Priority date is the first filing date of a patent application, anywhere in the world (normally in the applicant’s domestic patent office), to protect an invention. The priority date is used to determine the novelty of the invention, which implies that it is an important concept in patent procedures.

in Horizon 2020 means an action funded through a grant, the main purpose of which is supplementing individual calls or programmes funded by entities, other than Union funding bodies, managing research and innovation programmes. A programme co-fund action may also include complementary activities of networking and coordination between programmes in different countries.

refers to any computer software that is owned by an individual or a company and cannot be copied, used, modified or distributed by the others without having permission of its owner; its source code is almost always kept secret.

means any legal entity established as such by national law, and international organisations.

is referred to when expired exclusive intellectual property right is made available for unrestricted use to the public.

in Horizon 2020, means procurement where contracting authorities act as a launch customer for innovative goods or services which are not yet available on a large-scale commercial basis, and may include conformity testing.

Research laboratories and agencies operated and funded entirely by government and other research organisations including universities and institutes of technology that receive a significant share of their total funding from public sources.

see Plan for the Use and Dissemination of Foreground.