Research collaborations: Avoiding possible traps

May 14, 2007

Mass High Tech - Inside IP Law

written by Barbara A. Fiacco

Research collaborations offer institutions the opportunity to achieve goals they might not accomplish on their own: breakthrough discoveries with manageable costs.  Such collaborations permit the sharing of resources and ideas, but they can also bring with them risks concerning the intellectual property that grows out of collaborative work.  These risks are rooted in patent law governing inventorship and ownership of jointly created inventions.