The Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at Rice is committed to bringing innovations developed within the Rice research community into commercial use. To date, Rice technologies have been the basis for the formation of more than 30 new start-up companies. In addition, many more have been licensed to well-established companies around the world.
The licensing process begins with a request to the OTT to negotiate a license. It is helpful to specify the type (exclusive or non-exclusive) of license, the field of use in which you intend to practice the technology, and the geographic scope of the requested license.
After a brief period during which OTT will conduct due diligence on the prospective licensee, OTT will seek approval from the inventors to proceed with negotiation of a license. After a decision to proceed is made, a licensing officer from Rice will request a business or commercialization plan from the prospective licensee. If necessary, a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) can be put in place to cover the business plans and subsequent discussions.
Based on the information provided in the term sheet and investigation into comparable licenses, a term sheet will be developed by OTT for discussion with the prospective licensee.The term sheet will outline the financials of the proposed license along with other standard terms required by the university. Once agreement is reached on the term sheet, the specific language of the actual license agreement is negotiated. View Rice license agreement template.
View the list of Rice technologies available for licensing here.