FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

C4 Releases New Template NDA

Simplifies working with universities in Southwest Ontario

Members of C4 have jointly developed a template Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), creating a common NDA for member institutions.

Sharing secrets, without invoking pinkie pledges or spit shakes, is now a lot easier for universities in Southwest Ontario.

Today members of C4, a technology transfer consortium that links universities across Southwest 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.

“Having a common NDA across Southwest Ontario will make it a lot easier for businesses to interact with universities,” says Scott Inwood, , director of the University of Waterloo’s Intellectual Property Management Group . “We hope this will set a standard for NDAs between universities and industry or other universities."

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 Southwest Ontario by promoting technology transfer and commercialization. Comprised of ten 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. 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.

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