Industry/Federal Research Agreements

Industry Agreements 

 Agreements with for-profit sponsors cover many activities including basic, applied or developmental research, collaborative research, and various types of testing.

As a public, non-profit educational institution, The Research Foundation for The SUNY is bound by certain policies and regulations regarding what it can and cannot accept in an agreement. These policies are designed to foster the University's basic mission of teaching, research and public service and to ensure the academic freedom of our faculty.  The team of Contracts and Clinical Trials Specialists in OSP are authorized to negotiate this agreements with the sponsor to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement.

Whenever possible, our institution tries to negotiate an agreement using the appropriate standard contract language for the activity proposed. These standard agreements address key concepts required by the RF and University policies. When working with the sponsor agreement templates,  these concepts may or may not be addressed and can lead to lengthier negotiations.

Contract negotiations address a substantial number of issues in a variety of areas such as scope of work/budget, intellectual property rights, publication rights, indemnification, termination, confidentiality.

OSP carefully reviews and discusses the aspects of all proposed projects with the Principal Investigators. Information need in a negotiation, such as student involvements, use of background intellectual property, resources needed etc., gets captured and needs to be thoroughly addressed by Principal Investigators in the internal myResearch Grants and Agreements modules.   

Federal Research Agreements

Contract negotiations with a federal government agency primarily focus on budget and scope of work issues. The terms and conditions of the award are usually fixed by law or regulation. However, differences in the interpretation of law and regulation can result in the negotiation of certain clauses, especially in the areas of export controls, restrictions based on citizenship status, contractual requirements to provide protected private information in the absence of any regulations, options to classify the project as secret, publication approval and other publication restrictions or editorial controls. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the terms and conditions imposed by the agency are appropriate for the work proposed and applicable to the University and The Research Foundation for The SUNY.