2016 Patent
The history of human progress is a succession of discoveries and inventions, the genius of some put to the use of all.
From an individual company’s point of view, patents are a commercial tool with which to protect investments made in research and innovation and obtain additional financial resources by managing the rights of use, after the patent has been granted. In practice, a patent results in the effective enrichment of a company, in addition to strengthening its market position.
However patents are also an important asset for the country as a whole. This is essentially for two reasons:
- patenting promotes a wider dissemination of knowledge through publication;
- patenting helps companies monetise their innovations and grow.
Technical standardisation in the ICT sector is a clear synthesis of the two outcomes just described.
The patents project is an ongoing activity for TIM and is split into numerous processes involving various company departments, often availing of external partnerships with the best Italian universities (206 patents deriving from partnerships with universities and research institutes have been filed/granted), thereby stimulating the production of patents at a national level.
By the end of 2016, the Group’s portfolio of patents had grown to include 26 new patents filed and dozens of other proposals undergoing assessment, strengthening a trend that has been growing over the past 3 years. The patenting areas relate to the whole ICT sector, with areas of excellence in the mobile sector.
Since 2014, a new process has been launched to enhance the patents portfolio in Standards, in the knowledge that patenting and standardisation activities can interact in synergy, generating value for the community, by increasing the wealth of knowledge, and for the companies that hold the patents. Thanks to this process, 14 patents have so far become essential components of standard technologies.
When innovating TIM uses various instruments synergically to transform innovative ideas into reality. This is the case for example of Tim Working Capital TIM #WCAP of the Joint Open Lab (JOL).
One of the successes deriving from the convergence of JOL, Patents, Start ups and Spinoffs is “Spin-up” the new synergistic model for cooperation between industry and the world of academia, thanks to an agreement between TIM and the start-up MovePlus, a spin-off of Turin Polytechnic. The agreement provides for granting MovePlus a licence to use the patent developed and filed in 2014 by the Turin based TIM Jol Swarm, in partnership with the people at Moveplus,in exchange for a stake in the company.
