[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/C4_logo.jpg” caption=”C4’s member universities include McMaster, Guelph, Waterloo, Western, Windsor and Wilfrid Laurier.”]Sharing secrets is now a lot easier for universities in southwestern Ontario, including McMaster University.

Today members of C4, a technology transfer consortium that links universities across southwestern Ontario, are releasing a jointly developed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The new NDA will be used at McMaster, Guelph, Waterloo, Western, Windsor and Wilfrid Laurier universities.

The new joint NDA satisfies C4's twin goals of sharing best practices between institutions and making it easier for others to work with C4 members.

Previously, each university technology transfer office had a different NDA and businesses that wanted to collaborate with multiple C4 institutions would be faced with reviewing several NDAs.

Now a business that has collaborated with, for example, the University of Western Ontario will already be familiar with the University of Waterloo's NDAs terms.

“This common NDA will streamline interactions between McMaster and industry,” says Elsie Quaite-Randall, executive director of the McMaster Industry Liaison Office.

C4 formed a working group to develop the new NDA. The group reviewed NDAs from 17 institutions and researched the latest legal finding on the topic before jointly developing the new NDA.

After much work, they developed two template NDAs and an explanatory set of guidelines for technology transfer officers. The first NDA template is “one-way” — designed for situations where a university is letting a company review a technology or invention for possible licensing.

The second template is “two-way” — designed for situations where both parties are sharing information — and is the type most likely to be used by faculty members. For example, it would be used when a company seeks to arrange a collaborative research project or research contract with a university researcher.

The NDAs are simplified (just three pages) and modernized compared to the agreements they replace and designed to eliminate ambiguity while balancing interests of all parties. The agreements also contain provisions that can be tailored for specific circumstances.

“The prospect of being on both the issuing and receiving end of this NDA really forced us to write a balanced agreement,” notes Chabriol Colebatch, the C4 copyright officer who spearheaded the initiative.

The C4 is now working on a common Materials Transfer Agreement for C4 universities. It hopes to release that agreement this spring.
The template NDAs are available on the C4 website.

About C4:

C4 fosters innovation in southwestern Ontario by promoting technology transfer and commercialization. Comprised of 10 universities and research institutions, C4 members coordinate their resources, cooperate with governmental and industrial bodies, collaborate in multi-disciplinary research to solve real world problems, and commercialize the results of their research.

C4's members are McMaster, Guelph, Waterloo, Western, Windsor and Wilfrid Laurier universities, and Robarts Research Institute, the Lawson Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton. T

This diverse group of universities and research institutions generates hundreds of new discoveries each year. It is C4's mission to help its members transfer these discoveries to society.