Facts and cases of working in BIO-VALUE SPIR

Facts and cases of working in

”Bio-Value SPIR”

Strategic Platform for Innovation and Research on high value products from biomass

Here are some practical examples of the implications of the Collaboration Agreement. The original Collaboration Agreement is the legal foundation of Bio-Value and should at all times be consulted for settling inquiries.

  1. Facts about the Bio-Value platform

There are 15 partners in Bio-Value: 4 Universities, 9 large companies and 2 GTS/innovation network. Bio-Value holds a grant from InnovationsFonden[1] which runs July 2013 to July 2018.

There are 16 Ph.D. students, 286 Post Doc months and approx. 100 people all together working in 6 projects and 2 sub-platforms[2].

All partners have signed the Collaboration Agreement, committed to do excellent research within biorefinery and delivering innovation from both the individual Bio-Value projects, but also through collaborations with SMEs.

Collaboration Agreement: The list of partners, §1 and §2

  1. Why having a Collaboration Agreement?

The cool thing about having such an agreement is that all 15 Partners have a mutual right of access to each other’s generated knowledge across the projects for the duration of the platform. This means that information can be shared within the confidential forum of Bio-Value participants. However, by being a partner in Bio-Value you do not assume restrictions relating to competition towards each other.

Collaboration Agreement: §6

  1. What to remember when publishing?

The intention is that if you make the work together, you publish together! Before publishing a manuscript, you need to send a draft to all other partners in that particular project (through your project leader), at least 30 days prior to submission. Within those 30 days, the project partners have the right to demand that the publication is postponed for up to 3 months in order to secure intellectual property rights protection.

Collaboration Agreement: §10

  1. Yeah – we might have an invention! What now?

If you think you are sitting with knowledge worth patenting – run it by your project leader and your competence centre Leader. They will take it to the relevant industries.

Here is something rather unique to our Collaboration Agreement: If you alone have brought or gained knowledge in to a Bio-Value project that constitutes an invention, your company has the rights to patent it alone. However, if you make the invention together with somebody, you naturally have joint ownership! Both of you can make scientific use of the knowledge as long as it is not detrimental to obtaining patent protection.

You will negotiate a written agreement on how to patent the invention together or how to assign your share of the invention to the others if you do not wish to participate in patenting.

If you work at University/GTS/Innovation Network and gain knowledge that constitutes an invention, immediately inform your Project Leader. They will notify the relevant Industry Partner(s), who has 40 days to refuse the rights or purchase the invention. If refused, remaining Industry Partners in Bio-Value get dips on the rights for 30 days. If there is no answer within 30 days, the invention is free for you to sell to a third party. Conditions of a sale or a license shall be negotiated within 3 months of the answers.

Collaboration Agreement: §7 and §8

  1. Sharing what with whom?

If you have received a sample from someone, it is still their property, and should be returned or destroyed upon request. Don’t use it for anything other than what you agreed upon with the supplier and don’t pass on samples or confidential information to a third party! When you have received material, you are responsible for secure storage and confidential handling of the material. Practically, we don’t need a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) between Bio-Value partners!

The Bio-Value Newsletters, dropbox, articles and other publications are semi public forums – so don’t share confidential knowledge there. It is always the responsibility of

the one supplying information to inform the receiver of the nature of confidentiality. This duty goes on until 5 years after ceasing of the Collaboration Agreement, so 1st July 2023.

Collaboration Agreement: §5 and §9

  1. New partners

New partners can apply to participate in Bio-Value, but it only makes sense to accept new partners if new activities are described, and the new partner puts up co-financing (in-kind or cash) for added funds. Uptake of new partners is based on a unanimous recommendation from the Platform Board. SMEs are not partners in the Bio-Value Collaboration Agreement, but are affiliated to the platform through an SME Project Agreement.

Collaboration Agreement: §3.5-3.8

  1. How to do collaboration with SMEs?

You can set up collaboration with an SME, in which the SME applies for 50 % co-financing from Bio-Value to provide extra research and innovation in the biorefinery chains. The SMEs are not expected to share their knowledge with all Bio-Value partners, only their SME-project partners and vice versa. However, because the Bio-Value partners have co-financed the SME project, commercial agreements or patents arising from the SME project needs to be coordinated with Bio-Value partner(s) with overlapping Field of Exploitation.

Elaborated in SME Project Agreement: §8.1-8.3

FOE elaborated in Collaboration Agreement: Appendix 7

1

[1] Previously The Danish Strategic Research Council and The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation

[2] The socioeconomic, Sustainability & Ethics (SeSE) and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME)