British Library: Online Courses on Intellectual Property

The British Library Business & IP Centre has developed three free courses on intellectual property. The courses are totally free, easy to access, and being on-line they don’t require people to come to the Library. On the contrary, they might well be completed from home or from a local library.

BL have asked us to help promote them, so try these links -

• The link for the courses is http://bipc-ecourses.bl.uk/
• The link for the Business & IP Centre is http://www.bl.uk/bipc/index.html

"If you have an idea that you are looking to commercialise, these free courses from the British Library will help you understand how to protect your idea and how it might be developed.
The courses are designed with a customisable structure, so that you can both start from scratch or directly get to the specific areas you are interested in.

Course One: Basics of Intellectual Property Protection Find out all about patents, trade marks, copyright and registered designs in detail.
Course Two: Searching the Databases Discover whether your idea is original by learning how to do searches on different databases.
Course Three: Analysing the Markets Gain the skills you need to establish whether there is a commercial market for your idea.

Now you can grasp this complex subject using a simple step-by-step approach that takes you from the basic facts through to interactive exercises and sections such as "What Do You Do?" and "Ask the Experts".