Types of Agreements

These agreements cover obligations for conducting research involving human subjects. With IITs, it is standard in the non-profit research community that academic institutions maintain ownership to inventions where investigators have authored the protocol. On the other hand, Sponsor-Authored Trials are solely designed by the commercial partner and USC is simply carrying out the protocol without creative input. For this class of studies, sponsors file broad patents for the anticipated use of a drug or device and new inventions are unlikely. If this is the case, USC may consider a policy exception and allow commercial sponsors to own inventions that result from performing their protocol.

These agreements cover obligations for conducting research involving human subjects. With IITs, it is standard in the non-profit research community that academic institutions maintain ownership to inventions where investigators have authored the protocol. On the other hand, Sponsor-Authored Trials are solely designed by the commercial partner and USC is simply carrying out the protocol without creative input. For this class of studies, sponsors file broad patents for the anticipated use of a drug or device and new inventions are unlikely. If this is the case, USC may consider a policy exception and allow commercial sponsors to own inventions that result from performing their protocol.

U.S. patent law defines ownership as following inventorship, meaning he/she who conceives of a new invention is also the owner. In many ways, USC’s policy follows this idea, protecting inventions that our faculty and staff contribute to, whether alone or with others. Although commercial partners have their own set of for-profit obligations when providing proprietary information/products and/or funding and would prefer a quid pro quo exchange of their support for ownership to new IP, inventions are made available to our biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device partners via reasonable royalty bearing licensing options. This ensures USC may reinvest revenues into our research mission while working with industry partners best suited to bring new IP to market.

The CTO and USC Stevens work together to customize IP terms that suit the needs of each study and the negotiation process can include multiple draft exchanges with our sponsor’s legal team. Although most IP negotiations are successful, we will encounter challenges. We do not want to stifle our faculty’s ability to participate in research, which in turn may limit access to innovative care for our patients and scientific benefit to the general public, so if IP terms are in conflict with institutional policy, we will engage principal investigators to assist with sponsor discussions. We then, collectively with USC Stevens, conduct a risk analysis, allowing all potential stakeholders to make an informed decision as to risks and potential benefits of working outside of established policy. CTO and USC Stevens are here to assist in this analysis and preserve your rights to current and future research endeavors.