Cooperation between industrial companies from various branches and KIT results in a variety of cooperation contracts. A very important point of these contracts is the commercial exploitation of research results. It is also possible to use already existing R&D results of KIT in order to accelerate own developments and minimize develop-ment risks.
In cooperation with the KIT legal departments and the KIT patenting experts, quali-fied licensing experts negotiate tailored license contracts with industry and support institutes and other departments in setting up research agreements (research coop-eration/contract research). Through individual license contracts with branch-related license models, industry acquires the rights of use of research results in the form of property rights, copyrights, or KIT know-how to ensure market-oriented further devel-opment. In this way, the companies are given a lead compared to their competitors on the market and they are granted the possibility to open up new markets.
By the economic exploitation of research results and the resulting additional income, KIT is enabled to additionally fund excellent science at KIT and to give innovation incentives.
Licenses and the respective contracting are tasks of the Technology Transfer Section of the Innovation Department.