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1. What is a license agreement?
2. What are tangible research properties?
3. What is a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA)?

1.) What is a license agreement?
A license agreement is the standard agreement format by which the University and the Company seek to reach mutually acceptable licensing terms regarding an invention. Strategies for transferring inventions from universities to industry are based upon non-exclusive, exclusive, or limited-field licensing. A non-exclusive license is suitable for technologies, such as research tools, that are of interest to a number of companies. Exclusive licenses are generally granted for technologies where product development requires significant effort and investment on the part of the licensee. An exclusive market position is often necessary to justify the expense of the license. Exclusive licensing by discrete fields of use is most appropriate for some technologies because it allows for parallel commercial development of multiple fields or applications of the invention. All license agreements must protect the mission of the University by ensuring that faculty inventors retain rights to continue research in the licensed field, publish freely, and disseminate tangible research properties related to the technology to other academic researchers. The University requires that all licensees agree to appropriate indemnity and insurance obligations.

2.) What are tangible research properties?
Tangible research properties are a group of intellectual property material consisting of new compounds and formulations, biological research materials such as cell lines, genetic constructs, hybridomas and their antibodies, data sets, and computer software and applications. When university faculty want to share patented or unpatented tangible properties with their colleagues at non-profit institutions for research purposes, the materials should be transferred under a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA). CLICK HERE to get more information at the MTA section of this web site and see the answer to the question below.

3.) What is a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA)?
When university faculty want to share patented or unpatented tangible properties with their colleagues at non-profit institutions for research purposes, the materials should be transferred under a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA). MTAs are binding legal agreements between the provider of research material and the recipient, which set forth the conditions of transfer and use, protect proprietary interest in the material, and restrict distribution. Most importantly, the MTA requires the recipient to indemnify the provider from any liability arising from the use of the material. Executing an MTA also helps to preserve the faculty and University’s intellectual property rights while recording the transfer of the invention to another party.