How to Work With RIT

The RIT Tech Transfer office welcomes licensing and tech transfer requests from potential licensees. Our existing technologies as cited in the “Info for Companies” section may show some technologies of interest. Also, not all of our technologies/intellectual property (IP) are on display here on the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Office website. That being the case please feel to reach out to the Director, whose contact information is below, with your request for specific technologies/IP.

Once a specific technology is identified and mutual interest emerges, we work with the potential licensee to create a non-binding Term Sheet which includes the economics of the potential license as well as place holders for the necessary legal language that will be included in a Definitive Agreement(DA) aka The License. The DA follows from the Term Sheet elements and becomes a legally binding document when licensee and Licensor (RIT) mutually agree to and execute the document.

Licensees are asked to provide a Commercialization Plan before The License is executed and normally, depending on the specific terms of The License, RIT will ask for periodic updates to the original Commercialization Plan.

Economic terms of any license will spell out how the licensee will compensate RIT for the use of RIT’s IP for their business purposes. Such business purposes include licensees compensation to RIT for the licensees right to “make, sell, service, and have made” products which use the RIT licensed IP.

Licensed IP can include software (copyrights), firmware (mask-works), issued patents, pending patents, trademarks and know-how. Specific types of IP included with a license depend on a) its availability and b) whether it is needed by the licensee.

License terms will also draw from a spectrum of rights that may be available and include exclusive, limited exclusive (based on a field of use) and non-exclusive.

Existing companies as well as new companies (NewCo’s) are encouraged to seek rights to RIT’s IP via licenses.

Contact

Wayne Plourde

Director, Intellectual Property and Management Office

Intellectual Property Management Office

Research

wxpipmo@rit.edu