Legal & Intellectual Property

The University's policy on Intellectual Property, Confidential Information and Commercialisation clarifies the ownership of copyright in intellectual property created by students, staff, visitors and consultants and any exceptions to the University's first ownership. Any student, member of staff, visitor or consultant who comes into contact with any confidential information is under an obligation without limit of time to preserve the complete confidentiality of such. When a creator approaches Technology & Research Services (TRS) with their intellectual property proposal, TRS will convene an Innovation Exploitation Board who will decide whether to proceed with commercialisation.

Heriot-Watt Trading Limited is a private limited company which is wholly owned by Heriot-Watt University. The principal activities of the company are the provision of consultancy services, surface analysis, language translation and interpretation services, management and business training and the manufacture of finished goods.