Office of Technology Innovation & Commercialization
(formerly Division of Technology Transfer)
Confidentiality, Education, and Intellectual Property
We understand that businesses are in constant competition and many times the projects will involve the transfer of business sensitive and proprietary information from the sponsor to the researcher. All of our agreements contain confidentiality clauses, and our faculty is obligated by their employment agreements to abide by these. We take the extra step of ensuring that all students working on sponsored projects also agree to abide by these requirements.
Northeastern University is first and foremost an institute of higher education. Any project we take on must allow for the dissemination of new knowledge discovered by our researchers in the course of their research. This means that if a Northeastern researcher creates an invention during the course of a sponsored program; we are not able to maintain that discovery as a trade secret if the researcher wishes to publish it, which is why a patent needs to be filed on such discoveries of commercial value. However, it should be noted that the sponsor reserves the right for a period of time to review any proposed public disclosure to ensure that it does not contain any proprietary or confidential information that was provided by the sponsor unless the sponsor agrees in writing that the researcher may do so.
Agreements
The following agreements are available at the Office of Technology Innovation & Commercialization. Call (617) 373-8810 for more information.
- Exclusive License
- Non-Exclusive License
- Materials Transfer
- Confidentiality
Contact Us
Northeastern University
960 Renaissance Park
Boston, MA 02115-5000
(617) 373-8810 (Main)
(617) 373-8866 (Fax)