On 2nd May 2018, the City Law School intellectual property (IP) academics Dr Luke McDonagh and Dr Enrico Bonadio co-organised a Knowledge Exchange Forum on Intellectual Property, University Innovation in Robotics and Technology Transfer for Social Enterprises’ in collaboration with Dr Ana G. Alba Betancourt at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Institute of Juridical Studies. Both Drs are members of Work Packages 1 and 2, where they will lead the tasks related with IPR management and IP law, and as part of these tasks they organized a round table event at UNAM on the subject of robotics, university patents and social innovation expecting that the beneficial use of university IP in the social innovation context will lead to the establishment of spin-out and spin-off companies to support Mexico’s developing economy, particularly in areas such as health and social care.
In the event, leaders of robotics projects at UNAM, Tec de Monterrey and Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla presented their research and discussed their attitudes towards patenting of robotics inventions and IP commercialisation through spin-outs. Dr McDonagh and Dr Bonadio gave a presentation on EU-Mexico alliances in the field of robotics arising from the INBOTS project, and gave insights into the City, University of London IP policy and City’s successful spin out companies.
Within this network, Luke and Enrico explored connections between intellectual property (IP) law, science and ethics in the field of interactive robotics in Europe.