IPR is short for Intellectual Property Rights.

Intellectual Property Rights ensures the owner the rights to commercially exploit knowledge and research results.

The notion of access to IPR should be interpreted on a broad scale covering everything from narrowly defined utilisation rights to an actual transfer of ownership of those rights which the collaborator is interested in.

With respect to each individual model for collaboration, it is not possible to state the extent to which a collaborator will gain access to the IPR created within the project or already owned by the institution.

When dealing with rights which are based on knowledge already obtained by a research institution through considerable investment.

Or which are related to a research area with strategic importance for the institution in question.

Then a more goal-oriented and graded allocation of access rights to IPR might be considered.

When dealing with rights where such considerations do not apply - for example the rights fall outside one of the research institution's areas of strategic importance.

Then arguments for broader access rights might be well founded.

Joint projects are of such varying nature that, generally, specific agreements must be drawn up for each individual project.

Models of collaboration