Finding the Path Issues of Access to Research Resources (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Chapter 1: Material Transfer Agreements
Chapter 1: Material Transfer Agreements
Pages 4-11
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From page 4... ...
Now researchers and their employers, whether in private companies or in universities, must constantly be careful about their intellectual-property rights and so are often wary of passing on their research materials without securing some sort of protection. The result, said Joan Leonard, vice president and general counsel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
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From page 5... ...
The obligations can range from promising not to pass the materials on without permission to signing over all rights to commercial development of any discoveries made with the materials. MTAs have become perhaps the largest obstacle that molecular biologists face in gaining access to research resources, and they are playing an increasing role in other fields of science.
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From page 6... ...
"If you're granting an option to a company in exchange for a research tool, you can sell that particular horse only once; if the research project is going to require another tool that requires an exclusive license, you have a serious problem on your hands." The obvious solution would seem to be to negotiate shared rights, with two or more companies providing research resources and each being able to commercialize technologies arising from the research. But, Voelker said, industry has little interest in that.
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From page 7... ...
We asked three companies to work under those circumstances, and all three said no." The refusal is understandable, said Thomas Caskey, of Merck Research Laboratories. From industry's point of view, such rights-sharing agreements complicate matters tremendously in that there is no single owner of the resulting technology.
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From page 8... ...
Ultimately, many of the obstacles to obtaining research resources have their roots in the difference in goals and attitudes between the suppliers and the users of materials. These differences can make it very hard for the suppliers and the users to agree on what is fair in an agreement to supply research materials.
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From page 9... ...
"Bayh-Dole is 20 years old, and perhaps some of the deals that we cut earlier we would not cut now." At the recommendation of the Working Group on Research Tools, the NIH is distilling those lessons into a set of draft guidelines designed to help universities and NIH employees determine what is best practice in negotiating MTAs. Simply circulating the guidelines and getting the people responsible for technology licensing at universities to read them should help smooth out the dissemination of research resources.
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From page 10... ...
Part of the price you pay to work with academe is that it is going to publish that is not debatable. That people are still negotiating publication rights is nuts." Indeed, Holtzman said, only one issue in industry-university negotiations should cause difficulties, and that one is unavoidable: "Where the rubber hits the road is in the rights to new substances created with the material in question." The company wants to protect its investments by getting exclusive rights to future inventions based on its research resources.
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From page 11... ...
The reason is that the genes used in cre-lox technology are included in some of its patented agricultural products, so the agricultural side of DuPont sees cre-lox as a product, as well as a tool, and is consequently less willing to allow its use even for basic research without demanding compensation. Several speakers suggested that cre-lox might offer a model for university-industry cooperation on guaranteeing access to such basic research tools as cre-lox.
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