Development of a digital intellectual property library for engineering design education

The Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT) began incorporating intellectual property (IP) education into engineering design courses in 2003. Students are given an overview of basic IP concepts and practice surveying patents through the online IP Library of the Japan Patent Office. In 2009 KIT developed an internal IP digital library, named KIT-IPDL. The content for this system comes from completed student design projects. The KIT-IPDL system has now accumulated approximately 4000 design solutions, all developed by KIT students. Students can log in and inspect the design solutions of previous students to help them develop better ideas. It was found that IP education using the KIT-IPDL system enables students to acquire knowledge and skills necessary for IP asset management.