Agreement Definitions
A Biological Material License Agreement (BMLA) is generally worldwide, nonexclusive licenses to make, use and sell unpatented Government materials and products.
A Clinical Trial Agreement (CTA) governs the conduct of clinical studies of the safety and efficacy of outside collaborators' proprietary biologics or pharmaceutical compounds.
A Commercial Evaluation License Agreement (CEL) allows a company to evaluate, usually on a short-term basis, the commercial potential of unpatented, patented, and patent-pending materials or methods.
A Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) ensures that Government employees do not disclose publicly a company's proprietary information or trade secrets and that a company does not disclose publicly the Government's scientific findings before publication and before the Government is able to secure patent rights.
A Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) defines the scope and terms of collaborative relationships between NIAID scientists and outside collaborators in industry or academia. The collaborator usually shares research, funding, and staffing costs. The CRADA is the only mechanism, other than an unsolicited gift, by which Government laboratories may receive outside funds to support their research. NIAID/NIH owns patents on inventions that arise from its work conducted under a CRADA, but the collaborator obtains an option to negotiate an exclusive license to these inventions.
A Drug Screening Agreement (DSA) permits the transfer of proprietary biologics or pharmaceutical compounds from outside collaborators to the Government for the purposes of conducting screening assays for biological activity.
Internal Commercial Use Research License Agreements allow companies to use patented or patent-pending technology for internal research purposes with no right to sell or utilize the technology in a commercialized material or method.
A Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) documents and governs the transfer of research materials to and from Government laboratories.
Materials-CRADAs (M-CRADAs) were developed in response to the need of Public Health Service scientists to obtain proprietary materials, not otherwise commercially available, that industry is not willing to provide without an option to license exclusively future patent rights. M-CRADAs are usually limited to a 1-year term and do not involve transfer of funds to the Government laboratory, although a maximum of $20,000 is allowed.
A Patent License Agreement (PLA) is a commercial use license for patented and patent-pending technologies. PLAs are negotiated on either a nonexclusive or exclusive basis and define the royalties to be paid by the licensee during the term of the agreement.
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