Ownership of Intellectual Property rights

Ownership of Intellectual Property (IP) rights is an extremely important topic in the industry, and Avantium's IP policy is very clear and transparent. In Avantium's contract research activities, all IP relevant to the customer, i.e. related to the product and process, belongs to the customer. However, should Avantium generate IP on enabling technologies or methodologies during a customer project, this IP would belong to Avantium. Customer projects are in principle not used to generate IP on enabling technologies, however Avantium invests significantly in the development of these technologies to remain at the cutting edge of the industry, and it is these self-funded programs that are the main source of Avantium's IP on enabling technologies.

In addition to generating IP from contract research activities, Avantium conducts its own internal discovery programs. These are aimed at developing IP on products and processes, but are restricted to well-defined niche areas. For obvious reasons, Avantium has chosen to prevent any conflict of interest between these internal discovery activities and its contract research business, i.e., internally developed product and process IP shall not interfere with IP that Avantium develops for its customers.

Although Avantium's IP policy is very clear, it is nevertheless the IP clause in our contracts which is most discussed, underlining the importance of generating IP for our customers.