The Dutch Research Council (NWO) encompasses nine national research institutes and has the responsibility to identify patentable results from its research.
NWO-I, the Institutes organisation of NWO, is an independent foundation that is part of NWO. This organisation, legally known as the Stichting Nederlandse Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Instituten, manages nine national research institutes: AMOLF, ARCNL, ASTRON, CWI, DIFFER, Nikhef, NIOZ, NSCR and SRON.
The NWO institutes fulfil national and international roles. They form a national expertise centre, an incubator for scientific innovation and a breeding ground for talent. And they play a nexus role in national and international research or are developers, managers and enablers of large infrastructure or datasets.
Research at the NWO institutes is driven by curiosity and societal challenges. Scientific and societal questions of national strategic importance require research with long-term commitment and a pooling of multidisciplinary expertise and facilities. The NWO institutes provide knowledge and solutions with scientific and societal impact by scrupulously conducting groundbreaking, excellent research, making this accessible and disseminating the outcomes.
One of NWO-I’s objectives is to facilitate the use of research results by third parties. Applying for patents is one way to achieve this goal.
The patent policy can be found on the NWO-I website:
More information about the NWO-I patent policy
Or download the NWO-I Guiding principles knowledge commercialisation policy (PDF in Dutch)