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Classmates
Who are your classmates and where are they from? Add a picture to your profile and it will appear here. In the course you will have a chance to introduce yourself and to chat with your fellow participants.
Welcome to the course Intellectual Property! In this 5-week online course, you will be introduced to several basic concepts regarding intellectual property (IP) in the field of medical life sciences. Whether you work for a multinational pharmaceutical company, a medical device firm, a medical nutrition company, a biotech start-up, a university, or a regulatory authority, understanding the basics of IP and how the patent system works will allow to protect a novel medical invention. During the course, we will discuss several teaching cases that exemplify the various IP-related issues that you may encounter.
Learning outcomes
Upon completing this online course, you will have a clear understanding of the pros and cons of IP, as well various do’s and don’ts regarding how to protect your biomedical invention in a timely manner. Specifically, you will be able to:
- perform a patent search in public patent databases, including an analysis of a patent’s legal status;
- identify the various patenting routes, including cost estimates, and develop a patenting strategy that takes costs into account;
- discuss how to draft a patent with the help of a specialized patent attorney;
- conduct patent enforcement procedures; and
- develop a strategy for the valorization of your patents via licensing.
Reserve sufficient time to study
To be successful in this course, we recommend that you reserve at least 7 hours each week for this course. Each Monday, new course materials will be made available, and you will be free to work through these materials at your own pace.
Online exam
At the end of the course, you will take an online exam. You will be able to reserve a 1-hour time slot between a period of one week. You can pick a timeslot in the course dashboard or at the beginning of each week. After the online exam, we will let you know if you passed the exam.
Take part in the conversation
At the bottom of each page you’ll find a chat box, where you can leave a note for your course instructor or engage in discussions with your fellow participants. At certain times during the course, you will be asked to write a text on a particular issue or use the chat box to discuss key concepts.
Self-assessments, assignments, and the chat box
During the course, you will be asked to answer self-assessment questions, give your opinion in a poll, download documents, and/or engage in an online discussion by reflecting on your fellow participants’ assignments. Importantly, the self-assessment scores are not recorded; rather, they are used simply for your convenience and to determine whether you understand the materials presented. As mentioned above, you can use the chat box at the bottom of each page to leave a personal note for your instructor or engage in discussions with your fellow participants.
Background reading
The Background reading is optional (but highly encouraged) and is provided in case you would like to learn more.
Subtitles in videos
All videos in this course are close-captioned with English subtitles. To display the subtitles, simply click the “CC” button 
in the video player. You can also download the spoken text of the video by clicking the button ‘Download texttrack’. The button is displayed under the video. The downloaded file has an .vtt extention and can be opened in MS-WORD.
Video sessions
We realize that reading and understanding texts regarding some legal issues can be challenging, and you may have questions after studying the teaching material. To help answer your questions we offer three videocalls with Bruno Vandermeulen for IP related questions and issues. The first videocall is used to get to know the group. The second videocall is a Q&A session. In the Q&A sessions, you will have the opportunity to discuss your questions with Bruno together with a small group of fellow participants. To ensure the Q&A session is productive, we will need to receive your questions by email at least one day before the session starts. And finally, a couple of days before the online exam, there is another videocall where you can ask anything about the exam and questions about the last weeks of the course. You can find the dates and times of the videocalls in the course dashboard and at the beginning of each week. If you add them to your calendar, you will have the MS Teams URL's where the videocalls can be found. To participate in the Q&A session you will need a laptop, desktop, or tablet with a webcam, microphone, stable internet connection, and a quiet location. Before you sign-in to the session, make sure you’re familiar with the MS Teams software.
Publications and reading materials
Throughout the course, we will provide relevant publications and others reading materials. Most documents can be read using the online pdf viewer, and when possible a downloadable pdf version will be available. Note that due to confidentiality agreements with our course contributors, some materials may not be downloaded and can only be viewed in the online pdf viewer; however, if a downloadable version is available, you will find it beneath the pdf viewer.
As you have noticed this learning environment is pretty straightforward. Although we take great care to ensure the learning environment works on all browsers, Explorer may give suboptimal results (especially in video quality). Chrome, Safari or Firefox are recommended.
You can go back and forth in the course using the
buttons in the blue header of this learning environment. The next button is only active if all assignments of the topic are completed. The 
button in the header allows you to view the available course content at any time including reference to the topics you have already covered. At the bottom of each screen, you will find a 
button which enables you to ask for help -either with technical issues or course content related. You will be joined by other online course participants allowing you at specified times to interact and learn from each other. Use the 
button in the footer if you want to exit the learning environment.
During the course, you will at times be prompted to answer some self-assessment questions, perform and upload assignments and/or engage in online discussion by reflecting on your fellow learners assignment results. The scores of the self-assessments are not recorded. The self-assessments are included in this course for you conveniences to test if you comprehend the presented course content.
All videos in this course can be viewed with English subtitles. Press the CC button 
in the videoplayer to acces them. Some videos provide to option to naigate between chapters. Press this button 
to open the menu with all chapters. You will see each chapter marked as a dot on the videotimeline too.
Feel free to contact us by using the button in case you run into either technical problems or have course content related questions or issues.
This demo includes the course outline and several topics. Please have a look to see our learning platform and the way we like to teach online.
Activity
In the full course, you will see messages from your course instructor, uploaded assignments and comments from your fellow course participants.