Rapid development of technologies and the challenges our country is facing today are the main drivers of KNESS's activities. It is not only about the competitiveness of our business in the renewable energy sector, but also about individual, advanced and unique offers for our partners, promoting the quantitative and qualitative increase in renewable energy generation facilities and energy storage technologies, which are now crucial for the efficient use of RES and balancing of energy systems.
KNESS has its own RnD Center, which has been developing innovative products in the renewable energy sector for over 7 years. However, creating innovations is not limited to research, development and testing of technical solutions. Equally important is the issue of protecting intellectual property rights by patenting, registering copyrights and trademarks for the innovative products. And on this path, it is important to seek legal support to protect one’s own ideas and research.?
Olga Kuzmenko, Director of KNESS RnD Centre, and Ivan Davydiuk, Director of Legal Affairs in KNESS, presented practical cases of legal arrangements for innovative developments in the field of green technologies at the discussion panel.? We have summarized the key points from our experts' talk with regards to KNESS experience.
- Why do energy companies around the world implement innovations? To obtain new technologies for the development of renewable energy sources, facilitate the energy transition, improve energy security and create added value for their partners and society as a whole.
- Given the practice of European energy companies, most of them use very different innovation approaches/models: closed, open, venture capital funds, mixed. However, recent trends in innovation tend to favor the Triple Helix model. This model is about cooperation and high-quality coordination of business, education, and government, where each of these three links reinforce each other
- KNESS focuses on the closed innovation model. This model involves the use of in-house ideas, on the basis of which innovations are created using the company's internal resources. Within this model, it is important that the company employs the most powerful “minds” in the industry, highly qualified researchers and developers, as they are the source of innovative, and even revolutionary, ideas. The closed innovation model also implies high confidentiality of own know-how and its protection, i.e., patenting, copyrighting, trademarking, etc.
- ?Based on the current legislation, KNESS has developed and implemented quite effective business processes for protecting intellectual property rights and built internal mechanisms for copyright, patenting, trademark registration, etc. Within the framework of the current legislation, we categorized our intellectual property assets, defined the scope of their protection, built effective interaction between the authors' team and the legal department, etc. This process was partially automated through our internal ERP system IT-Enterprise.?
- An innovative approach to the registration of KNESS developments is based on the fruitful cooperation of the research and development team with the legal department from the very beginning of the project launch. This way, we manage to document the development process properly and prepare for future copyright or patent applications in a timely manner.
- In addition to a clearly defined business process for documenting, we provide training for potential developers so that experts in various fields understand what is expected of them.?
- For KNESS, it is especially important to ensure compliance with all the rules for the preservation and protecting confidential data and trade secrets. The ERP system, which allows differentiating access to information and provides for the creation of a secure data environment (data room), is an auxiliary tool in this regard. In addition, it is equally important to implement appropriate data and intellectual property protection policies that help to increase the overall level of understanding of the rules for handling data and responsibility for leaks of such information.
- By working with AI, we explored the issue of regulating non-original assets generated by a computer program(s). These assets are non-original because they are generated by a computer program, without human involvement in its creation, without creativity, after automatic analysis of certain data (photos and videos). These “solutions” are protected by sui generis law, i.e., in accordance with special provisions that differ from the general ones. No personal non-property rights arise as a result of the creation of a non-original asset. These rights can only be acquired by an entity. However, some entities (e.g., authors of a computer program) may benefit from a special kind of right (sui generis) to such a non-original asset. This means that these persons have a certain amount of property rights under the law.
The well-coordinated interaction of all relevant experts in documenting the process of creating the most advanced solutions, clearly defined business processes and roles are our know-how for the convenience of all stakeholders. We work in different areas to continue creating innovative technologies to accelerate the transition to a clean, green and sustainable future.
