You should submit a confidential invention disclosure to the Polsky Center before talking about your translational work publicly.
This includes:
- Publishing (including on arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, ChemRxiv, etc.)
- Submitting to “publish then review” journals (e.g., eLife)
- Posting a conference or grant abstract on a website
- Presenting a talk or poster at a conference, or defending a thesis
- Sending material to a company, or making an innovation publicly available
- Talking to reporters or other members of the media, including University-affiliated news
If your work is publicly disclosed prior to filing a patent, you lose the right to patent the invention in most countries outside of the U.S. and may also lose rights in the U.S. as well, depending on the details of what was publicly disclosed and the timing of the disclosure.
Your best solution to avoid this situation is to contact the Polsky Center team at polskylicensing@uchicago.edu if you have any questions about what constitutes a public disclosure.
The patenting process can proceed in parallel with publishing and does not slow down the publication process. Thus, the earlier you begin the process of working with the Polsky Center, the more options there will be to maximize the impact of your work.