Hi Kirsty,

We will generally take a more flexible approach to ownership where a studentship is fully funded by an industry partner. The rationale being that without a component of public funding, either through a University contribution or grant funding, there are fewer compliance concerns like state aid and funder terms and conditions to worry about. You of course still need to ensure compliance with other things like charitable obligations but you do not necessarily have to retain ownership of the IP to achieve that. We don’t have a fixed position on whether we will give or retain ownership in this scenario. We tend to take factors like what is the intellectual contribution of each side, what resources are they putting in, what kind of technology is likely to be generated and who would be best placed to exploit into consideration when determining what is appropriate.

Hope that helps.

Sapna