Laboratory Notebook Guidelines
Why keep a laboratory notebook?
- To provide you with a complete chronological record of your experiments.
- To provide information to a person who will continue your research project. Other future members of the laboratory may want to repeat and extend your experimentation.
- Correct record keeping of all your original work is essential to allow Vrije Universiteit Brussel to defend its patent rights. A patent is granted to the inventor who was first to conceive the invention. When properly kept, a laboratory notebook is a permanent record which can be referred to to prove what was done during the course of a project and particularly what inventions were made by whom and when.
- To prove the exact details and dates of conception and reduction to practice of your invention. Reduction to practice can be e.g. the successful testing of a compound, the building of a prototype of the invention or the synthesis of a chemical compound and an important date. In order to prove the date of invention, applicants need to provide evidence of the date of conception of an invention and proof of diligence in its reduction to practice. Diligence refers to your intent and conscious effort to make a working embodiment.
- Here you can download the presentation on why and how to use a lab notebook.
Pick up your own lab notebook
All lab notebooks are numbered and need to be registered by Technology Transfer Interface (TTI). You can pick up your personal lab notebook at the secretary office of the Technology Transfer Interface at the R&D Department in building M. Please contact Tania Bauwens at tel. +32 2 629 22 07 or tania.bauwens@vub.ac.be.
- Here you can find the online request form.
For more information about intellectual property issues
Please contact Hugo Loosvelt, VUB’s Technology Transfer Officer at tel. +32 2 629 3865 or hugo.loosvelt@vub.ac.be.