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New technology framework facilitates access to innovations in fight against COVID-19

April 16, 2020

A new set of technology transfer strategies designed to incentivize rapid utilization of available technologies that may be useful for preventing, diagnosing and treating COVID-19 infection during the pandemic has been established by a group including Stanford and Harvard universities and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The licensing strategies are meant to facilitate rapid global access of available technologies to help fight the pandemic. The patenting and licensing strategies include rapidly executable, non-exclusive royalty-free licenses to intellectual property rights that the signatories have the right to license, for the purpose of making and distributing products to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19 infection during the pandemic and for a short period thereafter. 

In return for these royalty-free licenses, the signatories are asking the licensees for a commitment to distribute the resulting products as widely as possible and at a low cost that allows broad accessibility during the term of the license. Additional signatories as of April 15 include Broad Institute; Cornell University; Georgetown University; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Nevada Reno; University of South Alabama; Virginia Commonwealth University; and Yale University.

Institutions that would like to adopt the COVID-19 Technology Access Framework are asked to make a public announcement to your community regarding your endorsement, re-post the framework in its entirety, and contact Ying-Li.Chen@Stanford.edu to request you be added to the list of signatories. 

tech transfer, coronavirus