Submit Your Innovation
Submitting your report to Innovation Partnerships is an important first step in documenting your idea and for protecting and licensing your discovery. With the information you provide, we can evaluate the impact potential of your innovation and our ability to protect the innovation through patents or copyrights.
Our online reporting system will lead you through steps to provide descriptions and information required by Innovation Partnerships to process and record your discovery.
Submit Your InnovationNeed help getting started?
Explore the resources in our Commercialization Basics Guide to learn more about the innovation submission process.
Need help with your submission?
If you need assistance with reporting an idea or discovery (including software), are having issues with submitting your invention or have questions email us at Innovation Partnerships or call us at 734.763.0614.
Disclosure
As required by SPG 303.04, U-M faculty and staff must promptly report to Innovation Partnerships all inventions, computer software, copyrighted works, research tools, and certain tangible materials made in whole or in part, as the result of or in connection with certain activities conducted by them and supported directly or indirectly by funds administered by the University. We will help you with this determination.
Importantly, you must urgently contact Innovation Partnerships ([email protected]) if you become aware a patent application was filed – or may, in the future, be filed – by another entity (such as a company or another university) in the U.S. or in a foreign country identifying you as an inventor or an applicant (or you were the source of material critical to the invention). If the filing was already disclosed to and approved by Innovation Partnerships, then this disclosure requirement has already been satisfied. Innovation Partnerships will work with you and the Office of General Counsel to ensure that your and the University’s legal and contractual compliance obligations are met. No patent applications listing U-M faculty or staff can be filed unless in compliance with the disclosure requirements of SPG 303.04.