I have been recently contacted by Katharine Ku, the head of the Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University. Kathy has been a promoter of several initiatives grouping US Universities to define general principles (eg the Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technologies) applicable to our day to day operations.
The latest of these important efforts lies around the use (and misuse) of academic MTAs.
Stanford and other Universities have agreed to refer, whenever possible, to the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement (UBMTA) terms, when dealing with other Universities or non for profit institutions.
A full text of the policy can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/grou/ICO/agmts/docs/mtapolicy09.pdf .
In my practice, we use simple academic to academic on page MTAs and have our researchers sign them when possible. In this regards the use of UBMTA may seem a more sophisticated (if not more complex) approach.
According to some of our American colleagues it however seems that some European Universities are becoming more picky about what terms they accept or not in their academic MTAs.
- Is the UBMTA the best shot to simplify our lifes and the one of our researchers ?
- Are there other approaches to streamline the exchange of materials between academic groups ?
- Should our institutions endorse this new policy proposal ?
What is sure is that any improvement in this matter is welcome.
We tend to believe our jobs are becoming more complex, making them more simple for us and our academics should remain one of our top priorities.