Information for Faculty

Glossary of Terms

• Bayh Dole Act - The federal law that gives the University title to inventions developed with federal funding, subject to certain conditions.
• Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) or Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) - The agreement by which inventors share confidential and/or unprotected information with researchers at other institutions or a potential licensee.
• Intellectual Property (IP) - legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.
• Inventor - An inventor is one who makes an invention, such as a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, as defined by the claims of the patent or patent application.
• License - Legal permission from a patent owner to practice an invention. License agreements include miscellaneous financial and diligence terms.
• Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) - is a contract that governs the transfer of tangible research materials between two organizations, when the recipient intends to use it for his or her own research purposes. The MTA defines the rights of the provider and the recipient with respect to the materials and any derivatives. Biological materials, such as reagents, cell lines, plasmids, and vectors, are the most frequently transferred materials, but MTAs may also be used for other types of materials, such as chemical compounds and even some types of software.
• Patent - A patent is the grant of a property right to inventor(s), issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A patent right is "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States.
• Trade Secret - A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers.
• Trademark - any symbol, such as a word, number, picture, or design, used by manufacturers or merchants to identify their own goods and distinguish them from goods made or sold by others.