This document is being provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be complete. Full template agreements pertaining to the Vertical SIM Program can be found at http://www.sim-flanders.be/documents.
IP Rules of the Vertical SIM Program
1. Ownership of results
Each party owns the results it has obtained under a project.
Results obtained jointly by several parties are their joint ownership.
a) patentable joint results are protected and exploited in accordance with a joint IP agreement executed by the joint owners
b) each joint owner may itself use non-patented joint results for educational, research and exploitation purposes (certain limitations apply for ICON results) if the joint owners did not execute a joint ownership agreement
2. Publication
The publishing party must give 45 days prior notice to the IP Board of the Program.
The other Program parties have 30 days for reaction:
a) legitimate academic or commercial interests are compromised
b) protection of background or results is adversely affected
If no objection is made within these time limits, the publication is permitted (but absence of an objection is not considered an approval to publish background or results of another party).
3. Limitations on the use/exploitation of its results
Each party has the obligation to grant access rights (see section 4 below).
The right of each party to transfer its results is limited:
a) transfer is allowed in connection with the transfer of the whole business of a party
b) other transfers: see paragraph b) below
The right of each party to grant licenses to its results is limited:
a) exclusive licenses: only after prior approval of the Program Steering Committee
b) non-exclusive licenses: the Program parties have a right of first refusal to obtain an exclusive license to these results
4. A party’s obligations to grant access rights to its background and results
Each party identifies in an Exhibit to the project agreement to which of its background the other project parties may request access rights (the party has no obligations with regard to background that is not on that list).
The following access rights may be requested by Program parties:
a) Access rights to background and results needed for the performance of a project: at no cost
b) Access rights to background needed for exploitation: fair and reasonable terms
c) Access rights to SBO results needed for exploitation: fair and reasonable terms
d) Access rights to ICON results for exploitation of results of the same ICON project: at no cost
e) Access rights to ICON results for exploitation of results of another project: fair and reasonable terms
! certain conditions and limitations apply if it concerns patented background or foreground
Each party that would like to receive an access right to background or results needs to make a written request to its owner and the access right is only granted after the execution of an ‘access right agreement’.