Office of Research



Office of Research

Intellectual Property

The OR and UCF’s Research Foundation (RF) are the official liaisons between UCF researchers and funding agencies. UCF’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) is responsible for managing the university’s intellectual property (IP) assets and for bringing discoveries to the marketplace through IP protection, marketing, and licensing. Our teams are committed to fostering growth of the research enterprise through sponsored research and facilitating commercialization of innovative research results. OR, RF and OTT work collaboratively to negotiate optimal IP terms in sponsored research contracts to ensure protection of university’s innovations and to safeguard the university’s rights to continue to use, disseminate, and build on its knowledge base and research capabilities, while providing to private industry sponsors opportunities to secure rights to bring university technologies to market.

UCF’s standard position on intellectual property (IP) in sponsored research contracts with industry:

UCF’s standard IP terms are consistent with the best practices followed by many other research-intensive universities across the nation and are briefly summarized below.

Each party to an agreement retains rights in its IP existing before a project or generated outside of the scope of a project (“Background IP”).
Foreground IP developed jointly is owned jointly by the inventing parties. Inventorship is determined in accordance with United States patent laws.
IP generated in the performance of the scope of a project (“Foreground IP”) solely developed by each party to an agreement is owned by that party.
An industry sponsor is provided a time limited first option to negotiate a commercial license. An industry sponsor may also be provided a nonexclusive license for internal research purposes.
Special Industry Partnering Program:
To support our research ecosystem and provide a pathway for more efficient contracting, UCF also offers interested industry partners certain selectable pre-negotiated choices for grant of commercial Foreground IP rights:
Nonexclusive royalty free (NERF) license with an upfront payment of 5% of the sponsored research contract;
Transfer of ownership with an upfront payment of 20% of the sponsored research contract or $30K, whichever is greater.
Exclusive license with an upfront payment of 10% of the sponsored research contract or $15K, whichever is greater; or
Researcher Responsibilities

TUCF employees are bound by the Collective Bargaining Agreement and/or by UCF Regulations 2.029 (Patents, Trademarks and Trade Secrets) and 2.033 (Copyrights and Works) to disclose to OTT the Inventions and Works described below. All capitalized words are defined in the aforementioned UCF regulations.

All Inventions made in the field or discipline in which the Inventor is employed by the university or for which there has been University Support and all Works developed by Creators using University Support ;
All Inventions resulting from Outside Activity within the field or discipline of the inventing employee.
All Inventions and Works made during the course of funded research;

OR and OTT will report to the sponsor all Inventions and Works developed under the sponsored project in accordance with the agreed-upon terms. OTT will lead licensing discussions with the sponsor.