The University of Arkansas’ Technology Ventures division has unveiled a new intellectual property option agreement for UA entrepreneurial teams.
Through this agreement, pre-incorporation entrepreneurial teams can obtain limited rights to do a commercial valuation, perform customer discovery and develop university-owned intellectual property for a limited period of time. According to a university release, the new option agreement is designed to give entrepreneurial teams increased security by the University of Arkansas agreeing not to market a given intellectual property for a set period of time. In addition, the University of Arkansas, under the option agreement, would only negotiate with the team that licenses the IP during that set period of time.
“We are really looking forward to supporting and organically growing our local and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem and seeing the impact that this new option will have on empowering entrepreneurial teams to derisk innovations,” David Hinton, acting executive director of Technology Ventures, said in a statement.
Under the option agreement, the entrepreneurial team would agree to share the results of its customer discovery, commercial potential, business plan information or funding opportunities with the University of Arkansas.
If a team elects to move forward by starting a company, the team would negotiate additional intellectual property rights with Technology Ventures. The option agreement is particularly being targeted at teams participating in the I-Corps program and the New Venture Development course in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
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