Current status of IPRs at Baku State University Gunduz Karimov Baku State University Current status of IPRs at Baku State University

In recent years, a number of steps have been taken to protect and develop intellectual property rights at the Baku State University. Special department - the patent department was established within the scientific-research unit of the BSU. This division operates in cooperation with the State Committee for Standardization, Metrology and Patent of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Each year, approximately 20 patents are obtained by the BSU colleagues, more than half of them being registered under the ownership of the BSU. Several Eurasian patents (in accordance with the Eurasian Patent Convention, which was signed within the Commonwealth of Independent States), which are now recognized in 9 countries, have been obtained by the BSU colleagues. Moreover, in 2015, the BSU colleagues obtained a patent in the USA in the field of chemistry - the subject matter of the patent being the porous magnetic sorbent.

The State Committee for Standardization, Metrology and Patents of the Republic of Azerbaijan has been announcing a patent competition in Azerbaijan for a number of years. So far, the patents submitted by the BSU take first place in all the competitions. We would like to note with that the Centre of Expertise of Industrial Property Facilities (AzPatent) and the BSU have agreed that special trainings are conducted for the BSU colleagues and individuals engaged in scientific activities in order to assist in the preparation of patents.

This also creates an opportunity for the scientific coordination and to protect the copyright. These works are regulated by an agreement between the BSU and the Academy. After that, the relevant orders of the BSU's rector and the President of the National Academy of Sciences are prepared, and the regulations of the branches or base departments are approved as next steps. There is close cooperation between the BSU and the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS). Some of the BSU's branches or base departments have already been established at the ANAS and some of its institutions.

In the curriculum of the BSU's Law faculty, the intellectual property subjects have special places in both bachelor and master specializations. In the mid-1990s, the patent and license law was taught as a separate subject. Later, after the establishment of the "Master in Commercial Law" program at the law faculty, the International Intellectual Property Law subject was developed as a separate subject. At the Civil Law Department a subject called Intellectual Law was taught for a while. At the moment, students of the bachelor's degree are taught the Intellectual Property Law subject.  

For PhD defences and post-graduate works, in order to comply with the copyright requirements, BSU employees conduct electronic checks to prevent plagiarism in each dissertation work. All the dissertations, including master's thesis, are submitted to the BSU's scientific library. Each department has a separate database, and for the purposes of prevention of plagiarism, bachelor's diploma works and master's dissertations are checked by the relevant structural managers.  

In 2016, more than 200 articles were published by the BSU colleagues abroad, in foreign journals. To encourage the authors,, each author is awarded with an award by the respective order of the Scientific Council of the BSU. Last year, the authors who published an article in the highest indexed magazine at BSU received AZN 300 (approximately USD 200). On average, each author gets more than USD 200 a year. This is probably thanks to the fact that 25-30% of internationally indexed articles published from Azerbaijan are accounted to BSU.

We would like to point out that one of the major problems is the poor commercialization of the obtained patents. Thus, a very small number of the registered patents is applied in practice. Its main reason is the existence of a gap between higher education institutions and the private sector in the application of scientific results. This is due ot the fact that the use of scientific results in the private sector is minimal. It is true that there is the cooperation between the recently established technoparks and some of the BSU's institutions. However, it would be good if the scientific bases were created in the private sector entities with the help of higher education institutions. PROBLEMS  

The main terms employed in the Azerbaijani Patent law are the terms of "employer" and "employee", and the terms employed in the Azerbaijani Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights are "service duty" and "service assignment". But at the universities, the inventors and authors can not be limited to the employees only. Students, masters, doctoral students, and researchers are not considered workers legally. In this case, the the status of these creators and inventors is unclear. Therefore, there is a great need for the analysis of the "Researcher" stated in the "Model Intellectual Property Policy at Universities and Research Institutes", adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, for the sake of law and the BSU's practice. In general, the absence of such policy or instruction in higher education institutions must be considered as a gap. The commercial exploitation of the results of intellectual property acquired at the universities remains a problem. PROBLEMS