The Swiss Youth in Science National Competition is well underway. In three online workshops conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) in January, participants learned about the role intellectual property plays in their project work.
The Swiss Youth in Science National Competition will take place in Lugano from 21 to 23 April. In the meantime, many young people will be working on topics from a variety of fields, including biology, history, literature and IT. To prepare for the final, they are currently fine-tuning their projects with the help of a coach.
In January, the regional rounds of the competition were held in Ticino, Western Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland, where the judges decided who was going forward to the national final. As a long-standing partner of Swiss Youth in Science, the IPI conducted three workshops at these events.
Whenever something is created, intellectual property comes into play. The young people put a lot of time and energy into their competition entries. They are creating intellectual property, which must be protected. Their competition entries are generally always protected by copyright. This protection applies automatically from the moment their work is created. It applies to literary works, works of art, architecture, scientific papers and newspaper articles. At the same time, the entrants also need to avoid infringing third-party rights. This can happen if they download photos for their project without checking the rules first. For tips on this topic, see below. The workshops also explored how to protect inventions (with patents), trade marks and designs.
The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) has been involved with Swiss Youth in Science for many years. The IPI’s experts support young people in the various phases of the competition and teach them the basics of intellectual property. In addition, the IPI offers an Assisted Patent Search to each participant.
Intellectual property in focus: where we are involved
