Technology Transfer

• Corporate/Industrial Sponsored Research
• Confidentiality, Education, and Intellectual Property
• Agreements
• Licensing Opportunities
• Contact Us

Corporate/Industrial Sponsored Research

The Division of Technology Transfer is responsible for reviewing, negotiating and signing all corporate/industrial sponsored research agreements, material transfer agreements, and non-disclosure (confidentiality) agreements. It should be noted that faculty members are not authorized to sign agreements on behalf of the university.

As the leading Co-op Education Program in the country, Northeastern recognizes the mutual benefits that can be had through industrial partnerships. With this in mind, we try to take a proactive approach to corporate/industrial sponsored research agreements. We have recently redesigned many of our boilerplate agreements to be flexible and more industry friendly with respect to intellectual property. Although we have designed our boilerplate agreements to take into consideration the needs of our corporate/industrial partners, we realize that every project is unique. Because of this uniqueness we make sure that we discuss each project with the faculty member and the sponsor, prior to drafting an agreement, to ensure that we have terms that provide the most benefit to both parties and more importantly will expedite the processing of the agreement so the research can begin as soon as possible.

Confidentiality, Education, and Intellectual Property

We understand that businesses are in constant competition and many times the projects will involve the transfer of business sensitive and proprietary information from the sponsor to the researcher. All of our agreements contain confidentiality clauses, and our faculty is obligated by their employment agreements to abide by these. We take the extra step of ensuring that all students working on sponsored projects also agree to abide by these requirements.

Northeastern University is first and foremost an institute of higher education. Any project we take on must allow for the dissemination of new knowledge discovered by our researchers in the course of their research. This means that if a Northeastern researcher creates an invention during the course of a sponsored program; we are not able to maintain that discovery as a trade secret if the researcher wishes to publish it, which is why a patent needs to be filed on such discoveries of commercial value. However, it should be noted that the sponsor reserves the right for a period of time to review any proposed public disclosure to ensure that it does not contain any proprietary or confidential information that was provided by the sponsor unless the sponsor agrees in writing that the researcher may do so.

Should you have any questions about sponsoring research at Northeastern, please contact:

Agreements

The following agreements are available at the Division of Technology Transfer. Call (617) 373-8810 for more information.

• Exclusive License
• Non-Exclusive License
• Materials Transfer
• Confidentiality
• Visiting Scientist

Contact Us