Interns and Your Intellectual Property: What You Need to Know

Last week's blog highlighted the absence of law clarifying the status of interns in Ireland. For IP-rich organisations, this may impact their ability to commercialise the fruits of their labour where interns may have created (jointly or alone) important intellectual property.  

Where does this arise?

Organisations are often satisfied getting interns to sign simple non-disclosure / confidentiality agreements, as they can't foresee them creating any intellectual property during their internship. However, if an intern creates and/or develops any IP a confidentiality agreement is unlikely to catch this and consequently the IP may not belong to the organisation.

It's not uncommon for early stage tech companies to use student software developers, graphic designers and similar as a form of low-cost labour, while students benefit from working on real projects. However, the uncertain legal status of interns means that failing to secure IP created in this work could