Joint development arrangements can provide significant advantages to unrelated parties seeking to leverage their different technical expertise to more quickly develop new technology or products for commercialization. Agreements memorializing these types of arrangements may take a variety of forms depending on many factors, including each party’s technical capabilities, the joint development project’s objectives, the relevant industry and the commercialization strategy for the project’s results, and whether one party is a research institution or whether both parties are for-profit technology based companies in related or different fields.
Regardless of a joint development agreement’s (JDA’s) ultimate structure, counsel should consider certain key issues, such as the following:
