Published: 22 March 2018

AMRC are consulting on a revision to our IP guidance, which has been developed by a group of research, legal and business advisors from several member charities and reflects best practice in revenue sharing models for charity funded research. You can find out more about it here.

AMRC first developed guidance on intellectual property for its members in 1997 which covered 3 core areas:

• notification and reporting for exploited IP
• ownership and management of IP
• revenue sharing

 The 2018 revised guidance:

• establishes that technology transfer fees are not automatically allowable, but provides for universities to obtain a 5% -10% administration fee; 10% for cumulative net income up to £100,000 and then 5% for income above that. Direct costs related to protecting funded intellectual property continue to be recoverable in the normal fashion
• recommends that once direct costs and any administration fee have been accounted for, the remaining net income should then be evenly distributed between the institution and the funder on a 50:50 basis

AMRC is inviting funders, universities, NHS trusts and other stakeholders to comment on these revisions, and on the guidance as a whole. We are particularly interested to hear of:

• instances where this new guidance would prevent a research organisation from accepting an AMRC funder’s grant
• examples where are a higher administration fee may be warranted
• experiences of UK or international funders on revenue sharing arrangements with UK universities

The deadline for submissions is 4 May 2018.