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The Philosophy of the CCRP
Intellectual Property Plan Guidance
Intellectual Property Resources
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The Philosophy of the CCRP |
Intellectual property (IP) issues are now so clearly important
in the conduct of agricultural research that competence in
this area is essential to success. We therefore wish to help
grantees operate as effectively and properly as possible with
regard to IP rights, and to ensure that the outputs produced
with McKnight support are available for their intended purposes.
The purpose of the CCRP is to conduct research that will benefit
farmers and consumers in the developing world. Knowledge developed
through funded projects is intended to produce technical improvements
that are freely available to the appropriate users and beneficiaries.
Researchers who receive support from The McKnight Foundation
must agree that the products of their McKnight-funded work
will remain available to these users and beneficiaries.
To ensure that research outputs remain freely available, researchers
involved in McKnight-funded projects must be aware of regulations
that may affect both the inputs that they use in conducting
the research and the eventual uses that they, and especially
others, may make of the outputs of their work. That is, they
must obtain permission to use others' IP in a manner approved
by the owner. If important rules are violated in conducting
the research, or if licenses for IPR are on a "research-only"
basis, intellectual property regulations may prevent the McKnight
researchers from providing their products to farmers or other
users who could benefit from them.
In addition to IP laws and contract law, international crop
research efforts are increasingly affected by regulations
concerning the ownership and movement of crop genetic materials
(seed or other plant materials, or DNA) that are associated
with the control of national biodiversity assets. CCRP participants
must be fully aware of national and international regulations
and procedures governing the exchange of such genetic materials,
both as they operate today and as they may change over the
years ahead.
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Intellectual Property Plan Guidance |
Each McKnight-funded project must have an intellectual property
management plan. This section offers some guidance.
The IP management plan will cover issues related to agreements
or contracts, both those dealing with formal intellectual
property rights, such as copyrights, and those related to
materials, provided under material transfer agreements (MTAs)
or licenses, that are used as inputs in carrying out CCRP
projects.
The required outcomes are described in the IP philosophy statement.
In brief, each project should ensure that research products
will be accessible to appropriate users and beneficiaries.
If the procedure described here does not work well for your
project or institution in one way or another, address it in
another way and clarify the point in your IP plan. Please
contact Rebecca Nelson if you have any questions or comments on these guidelines.
Here is a suggested procedure for the development of an IP
management plan:
- Please read the Foundation's
Statement on Expectations Regarding Protection of Intellectual
Property.
- List the project's expected outputs. This will likely
include:
- Products and reagents
- Characterized germplasm (including plant genotypes,
pathogen cultures, cell lines, etc.)
- Improved germplasm--cloned genes;
- Processes and methods;
- DNA/RNA sequence information;
- Databases and data sets
- Manuscripts and other forms of publication; and,
- Other materials, know-how, and future plans (e.g.,
additional follow-up proposals).
- For both your institution and each funded partner, please
obtain a copy of the official institutional regulations
affecting IP management policy or other IP policies, which
may include:
- Text examples of standard employment contracts that
contain assignment clauses or other IP provisions;
- Examples of language in material transfer agreements
(MTAs) ;
- Examples of language in nondisclosure or confidentiality
agreements;
- License agreements for any reagents, modeling software,
equipment, or other inputs used in the course of this
research;
- Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) or Letters of Agreement
(LOAs) with other institutions of relevance to the research
funded by your grant from The McKnight Foundation; and
- Any relevant information, such as agreements associated
with seconded or visiting personnel (including students
from other institutions) who would be working on this
research project at your institution.
Please include these documents as annexes to your IP management
plan. If no such documents exist for each institution involved
in the grant, please provide an official letter to this
effect, from the appropriate institutional authority.
- If the project will involve any international exchange
of germplasm or derivatives (plants, microorganisms, or
any of their genetic material), provide a complete set of
documents stating the national and institutional policies
relating to such exchange (if these are not already included
in the material submitted under paragraph 3 above).Indicate
what institution(s) is (are) responsible for authorizing
such exchanges.
- Review your list of expected outputs, taking into account
the documentation assembled under items 2-4 above. Note
the IP considerations applicable to each, especially those
IP rights associated with parties not directly involved
in the immediate collaboration.
- For each input, consider :
- What protected materials and processes will be
needed?
- What limitations will this pose to your ability
to use your outputs to generate the project's desired
outcome or the use of the outputs?
- Consider whether it will be necessary or desirable
to protect the IP or other product of the research,
either through formal IP protection or through a licensing
scheme. If it is necessary:
- Who will pursue such protection?
- To whom will the property belong (e.g., to whom
will the IP be assigned)?
- Based on the above, draft your project's IP management
plan. The plan should convincingly set out the mechanisms
by which your project team will ensure that the results
of the McKnight funded research will remain accessible to
the project's intended beneficiaries. The plan should contain
the following sections:
- List of expected project outputs;
- List of potential IP/IPR considerations;
- List of institutional regulations affecting the project
personnel and operations (with relevant documents cited
and included as appendices);
- Inventory of input IP contributed by each partner
and from third-party sources (materials, methods, software,
and any prior data you may use);
- Inventory of germplasm to be utilized (with relevant
documentation cited included as appendices); and
- The approaches and policies you will use for IP management.
These should include:
- Designated laboratory and field notebooks for the
project. (Such notebooks are required. These records
must be maintained by the principal investigator and
be accessible to CCRP management.);
- Innovation/invention disclosure reports;
- Timely publication of results;
- A database of licenses associated with inputs;
- Employment agreements or other valid and enforceable
mechanisms obliging inventors to disclose and assign
ownership of their inventions, or other intellectual
property such as data sets or results, to their public-sector
employer (or, where appropriate, to another institution
whose mandate for such ownership is to benefit resource-poor
people in the developing world);
- Assignment of royalty-free, lifetime licenses for
IPR resulting in whole or in part from McKnight-funded
work, with rights to sub-license for purposes consistent
with the Foundation's Policy Statement on IP , to
the Foundation or its designee; and
- Statement of a willingness to license or assign
rights to an appropriate international public agricultural
research system IP portfolio, should one be developed,
to facilitate use of research results to help food-insecure
subsistence farmers in developing countries.
- The following possibilities should be considered:
- Protective patenting-both utility and "innovation"
or "petty" patents
- Statutory invention registration or the like
- Before you formally submit your IP management plan to
The McKnight Foundation, please share your draft with Rebecca
Nelson. We will be happy to start with very brief initial
drafts, if this would be helpful.
- Please submit your draft IP management plan to the Foundation
by the date requested. You will be asked to present it at
a grantee conference. The final IP management plan must
be approved before the second year's funding will be released.
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Intellectual Property Resources |
Click on the links below for more information about IP issues.
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