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Contract Research

Contract Research means that the university performs research on behalf of another party.

Entrance to a building wth trees in the forefront.

The university charges a fee for the assignment that covers the university’s full costs for the project – “full cost coverage”. There are no formal obsta­cles to the commissioning party taking ownership of the results, and in certain cases, ‘users’ rights are sufficient. The commissioning party and the Principal Investigator leading the work shall agree on the terms regarding owner­ship of results and the commissioning party and the university shall enter into an agreement before the work starts. These rights shall be regulated in the Contract Research Agreement that is signed between the party and universi­ty before work is started.

Contract Research should benefit the university, which as a rule, means that the results should be able to be pub­lished and presented in academic con­texts and be to the benefit of continuing research and education. Confidentiality of the project is always taken into con­sideration and there are clear proce­dures and regulations to protect the commissioning party’s interests prior to publication. Accordingly, the universi­ty delays the dissemination of results until the commissioning party has been notified and given the opportunity to postpone dissemination for a reasona­ble time, usually 90 days from the date the party was notified, so that the party can apply for intellectual property rights protection, such as patents. The procedure for this should be described in the Contract Research Agreement. As a public entity, KTH is limited by certain public disclosure laws and regulations; for further information regarding KTH’s limitations regarding preserving confidentiality, please see the section on Confidentiality.

KTH performs its research assignments with the due diligence expected from a leading technical university. As re­search by its very nature is experimen­tal, the University is unable to warrant that certain research findings will be achieved, the commercial usability of such, or that developed results do not infringe on existing intellectual proper­ty rights.