Creative Collaboration - Agreements That Work

Fostering Innovation Through Partnerships

McCartney & Lennon, Jobs & Wozniak, Watson & Crick. We are all looking for synergistic collaborations. In life sciences, some of those collaborations may be with your employees, independent contractors or corporate research partners. This article will look at a few key IP issues to tie up in your research with others on patentable inventions. Being prepared for any outcome is important – not all the collaborations mentioned above had happy endings!

Identifying Inventors

Going into a research project, there is an end goal and you may have a sense of who the likely inventors will be. However, there are usually a few unexpected problems to resolve, plans change, and perhaps there will be a touch of serendipity. Inventors may be owners by default so you need to control everyone's potential IP. It is also important to properly identify all inventors on a patent filing.