Institutional IP Policy in less than a year: a story from Jordan

The Hashemite University (HU) Business Incubator

The research community at the Hashemite University (HU) realized the need of an Institutional Intellectual Property policy (IIP) a few years back, in particular when attempting to collaborate with hi-tech companies. For example, in November 2018, the faculty of engineering at the Computer Engineering Department was approached by the local office (in King Hussein Business Park, Amman, Jordan) of an international hi-tech company to participate in R&D projects. Unfortunately, the absence of an institutional intellectual property policy stood in the way of the collaboration and stalled the progress.

Due to this case and several others, the University made a few attempts to create an IIP policy, but the work had never come to an end. Until, in November 2020, the Industrial Property Protection Directorate at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply (MoITS) of Jordan announced its joint initiative with WIPO: the development of a general structural template for the IIP policy that could be customized to be adopted among all of the higher educational institutions in Jordan, including the Hashemite University.

In the framework of this initiative, the University president formed a committee to create and write-up the policy. This committee carefully studied the suggested IIP policy template, which was a result of collaboration between WIPO and MoITS. The policy was adapted to the particular needs of the HU as a result of international collaboration with WIPO by getting fruitful professional comments from the supporting local and regional WIPO experts on the prepared drafts, the Hashemite University IIP policy has been finalized and implemented in 2021.

Today, the HU IIP policy is a part of all new Memorandums of Understanding and other collaborative agreements signed by the University. “We now have the foundation for building our research collaborations with the local, regional and global partners”, said Dr. Khalil Yousef, Founder of the Robot Vision Research Laboratory (HURVL) at the Computer Engineering Department. “As the next step, we are working on the establishment of an IP office and committee at the Deanship of Scientific Research, in accordance with our adopted HUIIP policy”, said Prof. Bassam J. Mohd, Former Vice Dean of Scientific Research Deanship and IIP committee chair.