PhD studentship & IP arrangements

[Kirsty Metcalfe]

Hi everyone,

We are working with a company at the moment who would like to sponsor a PhD student with us – they will cover the stipend, tuition fees and provide an amount for research expenses.

Our query is what would be an appropriate position to take in this situation on IP ownership? In the past we have mainly applied for funding jointly with a company, rather than the company directly sponsoring the studentship, so would be interested in thoughts on suitable IP arrangements.

I’d be happy to circulate an anonymised summary of responses, in the usual way, if that would be of interest.

Thanks and all the best,
Kirsty

Kirsty Metcalfe
Research & Innovation Services
Teesside University

[Sapna Marwaha]

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

[Andrew Massoura]

Hi Kirsty,

I’d echo Sapna’s comments. We will tend to be a lot more flexible with fully funded studentships, rather than those which are only part funded.

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