We are excited to share with our readers an article, Getting To Know Evaluation Agreements – Terms, Practices and More, written by our friend Lieutenant Colonel Yoo Suk Sung of Districthardware.com, a leading online marketplace dedicated to educational hardware targeted to both small and large businesses.
This article provides an in-depth look at the terms and practices of evaluation agreements and what you should know in order to understand them, so you can protect yourself. In the realm of scientific research and intellectual property, evaluation agreements are an important legal document to which academic institutions and professors, as well as private start-up companies and entrepreneurs of all kinds, must be able to navigate effectively.
Our CEO, Professor Wu Dongshuang, recommends this article for fellow academics who are in need of a better understanding of these important agreements, as well as technology transfer professionals and researchers of all kinds.
When conducting scientific research, professors and academic institutions devote their attention to scientific developments in their fields of expertise. Intellectual property laws can prove to be a tricky, complicated field and unintentionally neglecting the legal side of the equation can prove fatal to one’s professional development and accomplishments in the long run.
As academics are exposed to research carried out in the private sector, there is a possibility of evaluating the research and even collaborating on further research and developments. However, there are a number of important factors to consider in these situations such as the safety of your ideas and whether the resulting research can be owned independently. That is where an evaluation agreement comes in.
An evaluation agreement is a legal document whereby two or more parties – often an academic institution and a private start-up company – determine the expectations and obligations of each party for the evaluation of a particular piece of scientific research. The intention is often to explore options for possible collaboration and to decide whether the collaboration is mutually beneficial and desirable.
Literally, it is a contract whereby the company advances funds for the purpose of studying and evaluating the current state of research of the academic institution, or a particular professor and their research. Furthermore, in the case where a company or start-up advances funds to an academic institution, they may be seeking to retain the rights to all, or part of, the research data.
Evaluation agreements are most often used in the field of scientific research, however they have a place in other areas of expertise as well, depending on the project that is being evaluated.