On November 10, 2025, the emergenCITY Lab organized a workshop with patent attorney Dunja Tsoumanis entitled “Protecting Innovation in Smart Cities – IP and Copyright made practical.” The workshop made it clear that technical innovation always requires a strategy for dealing with the public. Patents offer inventors the opportunity to protect their intellectual property with a temporary monopoly in order to prevent simple imitations. Dunja Tsoumanis summarized it as follows:

While in a hypothetical free market the motto is “do whatever you want,” in the real market the motto is “do whatever you are not prohibited from doing.” This regulation not only protects innovation, but also promotes it. It prevents duplicate developments, creates financial incentives and security for inventors, and forces companies to constantly develop newer and better solutions to problems in order to remain competitive.

The workshop discussed the various facets of patents, differences from copyright, and the “how” of patent application, but also the question of innovation itself: Why do we need it? What are the advantages for researchers to venture into new subject areas? And, in cooperation with HIGHEST, the advisory center for innovation and start-ups at TU Darmstadt, what this path might look like in concrete collaboration with them. HIGHEST already has over 200 patents and patent applications to its name, as well as 20 start-ups that it has supported with its consulting services.

At emergenCITY in particular, this topic is not only relevant for all sub-projects, but also for all mid-level researchers involved in the collaboration – now, but also in their future.