Development of Inventions and Creative Ideas
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this course on the legal and institutional side of invention. It covers the engineer's role as patent expert and technical witness in court proceedings and patent interference cases, along with the rights and obligations engineers hold in relation to universities, government, and businesses of varying sizes. Lessons compare how inventions move into commercial operations, drawing on the growth of New England electronics and biotechnology industries as case studies of different institutional models. The course also looks at incentive systems for creativity outside patent law, including approaches used in the atomic energy and space sectors. Materials come from MIT's OpenCourseWare archive and include the original syllabus and course readings, free to access with no certificate offered.