About DERI

Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) is part of National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway and is a Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET). DERI was established in 2003 with funding from the Science Foundation Ireland. After more than eight years of operation DERI has become an internationally recognized institute in semantic web research, education and technology transfer, directly contributing to the Irish government’s plan of transforming Ireland into a competitive knowledge economy. As a CSET, DERI brings together academic and industrial partners to boost innovation in science and technology, with its research focused on the Semantic Web.

The Challenge

The ongoing work by DERI Researchers results in a significant amount of software. This software normally builds on the work by other researchers within DERI as well as previous work by students and professors that may have moved on to other projects or to industry. In many cases, in order to speed up the research work, open source and other readily-available third party software is used. 

By the nature of the collaborative research,  many of the software projects consist of components with different pedigree.  In many cases the research is transferred to DERI’s industrial partners. Both academic and industry organizations constantly question the origin of the codes, as well as obligations associated with the use of the code in their projects.

Keeping track of the Intellectual Property (IP) ownership, and the obligations around each component of the project, generally expressed in terms of an associated license, in all but simplest cases becomes impossible.

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