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Our alliances with possible collaborators from industry can be structured in a variety of different ways. We are willing to discuss with you to identify and implement the path that will be most suitable for your organization. It is important for all the involved parties to come to an agreement that will be beneficial for everyone and, above all, facilitate the commercialization of the invention.

It should be kept in mind that each invention/technology is unique so the technology transfer agreements will be designed on a case-by-case basis.

The following are the different possible agreements that you have the opportunity of implementing:

License Agreement – A license agreement will give the company rights to commercialize the intellectual property. In the license agreement, we will outline revenue sharing plans, legal details, and time-bound milestones for development of the product.

Options – An option agreement gives the industry partner opportunity to evaluate the technology and its value prior to finalizing the decision to license it and pay the licensing fee. It should be noted that if you sign an option agreement you do not gain the rights to commercialize the technology. This only offers you a time-limited opportunity to conduct further development and due diligence so that you can make a more informed decision regarding entering into a license agreement. Following internal research and evaluation, the company can exercise the option and sign a license agreement.

Sponsored Research Agreements – Industry can sponsor an NSU researcher's entire project or a part of it that is relevant to their specific area(s) of interest. This will not only allow the company to be involved with the project from an early stage but also give them priority in licensing the invention(s) that might originate from this sponsored research project. This agreement will lay out details such as ownership of intellectual property, scope of work, duration of the project, and extent of financial support by the company.

Industry-Academia Research Alliance – This agreement will be implemented if researcher(s) employed by a company is interested in collaborating with one of NSU’s researchers. Prior to initiating such an industry-academia collaborative research project, we will need to execute a research collaboration agreement that will contain information pertaining to legal terms, contribution from each participant, intellectual property ownership, and other relevant details. The most obvious difference between this kind of agreement and sponsored research agreement is substantial intellectual and scientific contribution by the company.