Brunswick Material Transfer Agreement
The Brunswick Group has developed a Material Transfer Agreement for use between two universities to facilitate routine transfer of materials between academic institutions. The aim is to remove the need to spend time on drafting and negotiation in the majority of cases, and to avoid the embarrassing situation where a provider of material asks for MTA terms that they would not accept as a recipient.
The approach is deliberately minimal, and is not intended to cater for all situations. In particular, it is not suitable for use with clinical materials. Situations in which there is known to be an IP position that needs careful treatment are also not suitable. However, we have avoided the inclusion of onerous IP terms “just in case IP is an issue” by insisting that no-one in the drafting group propose an amendment that they would not accept both as donor and recipient.
We consider that it is reasonable to expect that for routine transfers of materials universities should be prepared to sign up to identical terms for both incoming and outgoing transfers. Therefore, although this agreement may be used unilaterally, we believe that it will be more effective as the basis of an agreement between two institutions to use the agreement for all routine transfers between them in either direction.
This agreement is not designed for use between universities and commercial organisations, a task that is being tackled by the Lambert Group.
Click here to download the template agreement
The template is available for all universities and other public sector research institutions to use, not just those in the Brunswick Group. Institutions that have signed up for its use are:
- Birmingham
- Bristol
- Cambridge
- Cardiff
- Durham
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow
- Imperial College London
- King’s College London
- Leeds
- Liverpool
- Manchester
- Newcastle
- Nottingham
- Oxford
- Sheffield
- Southampton
- Sussex
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust
- Royal Veterinary College
- University of Portsmouth
- Sunderland
- University College Dublin
If your institution would like to sign up, please contact Ian Carter or Phil Clare.