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Total of €600,000 available for projects on artificial intelligence and academic contributions to innovation
The European Patent Office, which examines patent applications from innovators seeking to protect their intellectual property, has opened a call for proposals for its research funding scheme, offering grants of up to €150,000.
Now in its fifth iteration, the scheme has been “revamped” to support collaborative research with other institutions, and to enable projects to “benefit from a wider scope, bigger budget and longer duration”, the EPO said on 3 August.
This version has two funding streams, each offering a total of €300,000. One stream is focused on the impact of academic research on industrial innovation and the economy. The other centres on the use of artificial intelligence in training people around intellectual property and in using patents as a data source.
Over the past four years, the scheme has received 212 proposals and awarded 19 grants, the EPO said. Proposals for the latest call are due on 15 October. Applications may be submitted by individual research institutes in one of the EPO’s 38 member states or by groups of institutes with members anywhere in the world, as long as the contracting partner is in a member state.