Foreground IP

Foreground IP, also called project IP or results, is the intellectual property that a research collaboration creates: the inventions, software, data, and know-how that didn't exist when the agreement was signed.

How it works in a university-industry collaboration

Who owns foreground is the clause that takes longest to agree. At a US research university the default is that the university owns inventions its employees make, and the sponsor gets a license, an option, or a pre-priced right. Where any federal funding is involved in the project, an invention conceived or first reduced to practice in that work is a "subject invention" under the standard patent rights clause at 37 CFR 401.14, and the university's obligations (disclosure, election of title, a license to the government) can't be contracted away. The Supreme Court held in Stanford v. Roche that title doesn't vest in the university automatically, because rights begin with the inventor, which is why universities rely on assignment agreements with their researchers.

Joint ownership sounds fair, but is usually avoided. Hagedoorn's study of joint patenting among companies found it rare and reserved for close, repeated partners, because each co-owner's rights to license and enforce create friction in every later decision (Industrial and Corporate Change, 2003). The model agreements instead assign foreground to one party and give the other defined rights to use it.

Translation Box: foreground IP

On the academic side: "the results," which include the paper and the thesis, and which the university's technology transfer office will decide whether to patent.

On the industry side: the thing the company paid for. The useful reframe is that the company paid for a defined route to rights in the results, and the route is what to negotiate.

What Helikon does with it

Helikon doesn't record who owns an invention. The project's agreement type and the signed contract are recorded on the project, and the agreement's terms are where ownership lives.