Sumetha at the World Intellectual Property Organisation Summer School in Switzerland

As a final-year PhD student, intellectual property has been an interest that has grown alongside my PhD. In my first year, I worked as a technology transfer intern at Edinburgh Innovations, the University's commercialisation office, where I gained insight into how research moves beyond the lab. Curious to explore this further, I audited a course at Edinburgh Law School on Advanced Issues in Patent Law and Policy earlier this year, before applying to the World Intellectual Property Organisation–University of Geneva (WIPO-UNIGE) 2026 Intellectual Property Summer School in Geneva, Switzerland.

The summer school brought together postdocs, PhD students, practising lawyers, and undergraduates from across the world, and covered a wide range of topics, including the Patent Cooperation Treaty, patent litigation, IP in the pharmaceutical industry, and the WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources. We also had sessions on IP in some enjoyably different sectors; the watch industry, the sports industry, and the luxury goods industry, which were useful for understanding the range of IP protection and how differently IP strategy is applied depending on whether you're protecting a small-molecule drug or a Swiss watch calibre.
 

Having attended scientific conferences before, it was a new experience to instead attend the IP Researchers Europe (IPRE) 2026 conference, where the focus shifted to where IP law is heading in an increasingly digital and data-driven world, and what this means for how we approach protection, access, and innovation policy.

Finally, the summer school closed with a group exercise around a real-world technology transfer case study, which gave me a deeper understanding of the concept of field of use; the practice of licensing a single patent to different parties for use in different, non-competing applications, so that a university can maximise both the commercial and societal reach of a single invention. This captured both the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of science and law. 

Thank you, ACRC, for supporting my interest in IP!