Preprints and social media: balancing early publication with commercial IP protection

Friday, 31st January 2025

Universities are well aware of the strategic importance of commercialising innovation and a recent report shows that four UK universities are in the top ten in Europe for numbers of startups based on university patent applications¹.

It is also well appreciated that academic researchers are under significant pressure to disseminate their findings with both their peers and the general public. However, when their research has commercial potential, it may require filing a patent application prior to publication. If the invention is disclosed prior to filing a patent application, then this can be harmful or even fatal to protecting the invention and commercialising the research. This is becoming even more important with the increased use of online preprint servers and social media where publication takes place shortly (or immediately!) after upload.

Whether an invention protected in a patent or patent application is considered new and inventive depends on a concept known as the state of the art, also known as prior art. According to the European Patent Office, the state of the art is everything made available to the public by means of a written or oral description, by use, or in any other way, before the filing date of the patent application. This means any public dissemination of work, whether through traditional means such as peer reviewed journal publication or instant publication through preprint servers or social media.

Historically, the first public dissemination of research, and therefore of a potential invention, was usually through publication of the work in an academic journal. Publication in an academic journal requires the manuscript to be peer reviewed which is often a lengthy process of review and revision taking several months and sometimes requiring multiple journal submissions, reviews, revisions, and additional experiments or analysis. Meanwhile, the scientific results contained in the manuscript are not publicly available. Submission to an academic journal for peer review is usually confidential and does not impact the patentability of the invention, provided the patent application is filed before publication.

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