Engineering and Intellectual Property Protection

Appendix 1

Course: Engineering and Intellectual Property Protection

Programme Summary

Major: 13.04.01 Thermal Power Engineering and Thermal Technology

Degree: Master

Course units:

• Unit 1. Introduction. General concepts. The role of engineering and innovations in investment business.
• Unit 2. Solution of engineering problems.
• Unit 3. Intellectual property protection.
• Unit 4. Patent science.

Course contents:

Unit 1. Introduction. General concepts. The role of engineering and innovations in investment business.

The role and place of engineering in investment practice: Engineering, approval, and investment justification; participants of the investment business and issues addressed; designer – investor – governing agencies, expert groups, national regulators, engineering and consulting companies, tender boards. Development, presentation and management of design documentation: Preliminary and project documentation development stages; investment design, declaration of intention, commercial proposals, preparation of quotations; design bureaus specializing in thermal power plants and industrial systems.

CAD programmes for industrial thermal power systems: Mathware; CAD & industrial thermal power circuits; design model; application software packages. Basics of standardization: ISO 9000; quality management; basic quality management models; legislation, arbitration and regulatory documentation defining the level of design solutions. Basics of design certification: Generation and verification of a certification system.

Unit 2. Solution of engineering problems.

Basics of innovative thinking and performance: Creativity as an ability to generate new ideas; strategy as an identification of a feasible idea for successful business; implementation or business model as a transition from the idea to implementation of products and services; profitability as a financial or another benefit. Non-algorithmic methods of solving engineering problems: Trial and error; brainstorming; morphological analysis; synectics. Theory of Inventive Problem Solving: Levels of problems; material & field analysis; an inventive situation, a problem and its model; technical contradictions and how to eliminate them.

Standard techniques for solving inventive problems in thermal power engineering: Pool of techniques for searching new solutions; rules on how to apply transformation techniques; levels of techniques. Application of physical, chemical and geometrical effects and resources when solving inventive thermal power problems: Application features and rules; the database of effects, phenomena and material & field resources. Application of inventive problem resolution standards and the laws of engineering system evolution: Definition and types of standards; the database of standards; the laws of engineering system evolution.

Unit 3. Intellectual property protection.

The legal and economical aspects of the regulation and assessment of industrial & intellectual property in Russia: Patent Law; regulations; scope of protection and the legal framework; priority, authorship, exclusive right to utilization, reversal of the burden of proof. The role and the place of inventions in the investment business: Commercial implementation of inventions; licencing; know-how.

Intellectual property protection: Copyright protection – patents and certificates; the drafting algorithm for intellectual property agreements. Industrial property: Inventions, utility models, prototypes; inventions – mechanisms, devices, substances, new applications of existing objects; International Patent Classification.

Unit 4. Patent science.

The algorithms of writing applications for utility models and inventions: The purpose of invention and utility models; patentability – originality, inventive level, applicability; writing formulas of inventions; search for information based on the application; unity of invention.

The algorithms of filing and examining applications for utility models and inventions: The applicant, the author, the patent owner; application requirements; application submission and registration; formal examination; dealing with the Patent Office; substantial examination.

Activities:

• Teacher-led group activities in a classroom;
• Extracurricular self-study of the teacher’s assignments and tasks, including the use of educational facilities (obligatory);
• Office-hours.

Total hours – 144.

Total points – 4.

Classroom hours – 32.

Unsupervised hours – 76.

Midterm assessment – Examination.